Felicity's Secret
by a-delacroix
Summary: Added Chap 7. Felicity has a big secret - she is not simply a geeky IT girl. No, she is really Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. She was looking for a period of respite from her life in the JLA, but instead she found something more - love for a budding superhero. But her old life won't leave her alone for long. A story Arrow could tell, if only they gave up their 'no superhero' rule!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer - **As always, someone else owns all these characters. I wish I owned Felicity, but sadly I'm afraid it will never happen.

**Felicity's Secret**

My cheeks felt like they were on fire. Once again, when Oliver and I were in a dangerous situation, my mouth had outrun my brain and words had spewed forth which revealed more of my secret desires than I would ever consciously admit. With impossibly hot and sexy women like Laurel, Helena, and McKenna constantly swirling around him, I knew I would never stand a chance with him. Well, perhaps I could compete if I revealed my big secret, but it was ultimately as likely to scare him away as attract him. And I had sworn to myself I would never reveal it to keep my enemies from tracking me down.

Therefore, as always, I was forced to backpedal to recover from my horrible gaffe.

"Ah, Oliver, I didn't mean . . ."

"Not now, Felicity," interrupted Oliver, as he fought to keep the eight attackers from reaching me while I packed up my gear.

Previously, I had generally only seen the consequences of Oliver's actions. And by that I mean his post-combat condition with a battered and bruised body, usually merely pummeled, but occasionally shot by guns or arrows. I had never witnessed him in a fight against so many opponents. Now, he was dodging and darting, delivering far more blows with his fists and feet and side of his bow than he was receiving. But with the other side's eight-to-one advantage, he was sustaining enough hits for them to cumulatively start to take their toll.

It was tough to stand there and watch, pretending to cower, when I could have taken them all out in a second. Finally, when I saw two of the men start to draw guns, I knew I had to do something – secret be damned.

A workbench covered with a variety of wrenches, hammers, and other tools was located about eight feet to my right. Quickly, I stepped over, hoping Oliver wouldn't notice my movement. I grabbed and tossed four projectiles – one at each of the men with the guns and the other two at the men standing the farthest from Oliver. I tried to avoid hitting anything vital and tried to hit them just hard enough to take them out of the fight without killing anyone. But I still winced when I heard bones snap in the arm of one man and the leg of another.

With the odds down to just four against one, Oliver quickly finished them off. His nose and lip were bleeding and he was moving with a slight limp, but he was still on his feet. I needed to get him out of there before he realized someone else had taken down half of his opponents.

"Oliver, we need to get out of here, now. I think I hear more of them coming," I stated while pointing to a door behind us and simultaneously gently nudging him towards the exit in the opposite direction.

His bow was up and cocked in an instant. I just had time to register the special tip on this arrow before he let loose. Before it had covered half the distance to its target, he had already grabbed my arm and started dragging me towards the exit.

The arrow exploded behind us with a giant shower of sparks and light to dazzle and confuse the opposition. Realizing Oliver hadn't noticed the extra downed men, a quick smile flashed across my face. Then, when I thought he was about to glance in my direction, I used the motion of pushing my glasses back up to block his view until I had my grin under control.

"Did you get the info we need to find where they are holding Carol?" Oliver asked as we ran.

I held up my tablet before stuffing it into my shoulder bag. "I hope so. I copied everything on their server. If the information is there, I'll find it. It is just a question of how long it will take to break their encryption algorithms."

Oliver nodded, as his gaze swept from side-to-side watching for potential opposition. Fortunately, he wasn't a techie and never fully appreciated the nearly impossible nature of my task. The current state-of-the-art encryption algorithms would take even the best NSA supercomputers months or years to break. But he never questioned my ability to manage the same feat in minutes or hours. Which was for the best or I would have been forced to explain how my trusty old tablet contained a crystal-based quantum computer at least forty years in advance of anything mankind currently possessed.

An old friend of Oliver's, Carol Ferris, had been kidnapped. When the news broke, Oliver had asked me to look for her. My research into her background had quickly uncovered the fact she was just as beautiful as every other woman in Oliver's life. However this woman was more than just beautiful; she was the scion of another of America's most powerful families like the Queen's of Starling City, the Luthor's of Metropolis, or the Wayne's of Gotham. Her father was CEO and founder of Ferris Air and Carol was the Vice President of one of their largest divisions. Oliver had never explained how he had met her, but from what I had found, I assumed their friendship had to date to the time they had both attended the same private prep school in New York.

So, for the first time in weeks, we were on a mission that didn't involve 'The List'.

Oliver raised his right hand to his ear and pressed the side. Immediately, in a phase-shifted stereo I heard his next words from both his mouth and my matching miniature earpiece. "Digg, we are on our way out. What's the situation out there?"

John 'Digg' Diggle's voice came back immediately with just a faint static crackle. "Alarms are going off and at least six armed guards are scurrying around like someone has upset the ant hill. You better go with plan B."

"Right," replied Oliver and immediately turned and ran in a new direction.

Plan B involved getting to the roof, shooting a cable across to the next building over, and then sliding down the wire while dangling a hundred feet in the air. The last time we had done something like this, when we were climbing around the top of the elevator shafts in Merlyn's headquarters, I had professed a fear of heights. If only I could let Oliver in on my secret we wouldn't have to play these silly games. But at least if he thought I was truly afraid of heights, I would get to spend a few special seconds with him holding me tightly against his body. Perhaps I could use the corny old line 'For luck' like Princess Leia had done when she and Luke were about to swing across the chasm in the Deathstar and steal a quick kiss. Yes, a quick kiss sounded like a wonderful plan.

We ran up the stairs. And ran up more stairs. And then ran up even more stairs. It was at least twenty flights to the roof and Oliver raced along like 'The Little Train That Could'. I kept up effortlessly, but then remembered my secret identity. I was nerdy, geek girl. I spent all my time playing with computers with only sporadic visits to the gym. Therefore when I knew we were within one flight of reaching our destination, I stopped and forced myself to bend over and gasp for air.

"Oliver . . . I can't . . . run another . . . step," I panted.

Oliver stopped and stared down at me. Just then we both heard a door slam open in the stairwell somewhere far below us, followed by the pounding of many feet. Just as I had hoped, Oliver ran back down the six steps to the landing were I was still leaning against the wall half bent over. Quickly, he swept me up in his arms and raced back up the remaining flight of stairs. I snuggled in close with my cheek pressed firmly against his. The movement had pushed his hood back and left my lips a bare fraction of an inch from his ear. Still pretending to breathe hard, I let the air caress his ear in what I hoped was an erotic manner. I was tempted to reach out and give the lobe a quick kiss, but decided shy, bashful Felicity would never be so brave. And truthfully, once I had that small morsel of flesh within my grasp, I might lose complete control.

Thankfully, before I had time to contemplate doing anything really stupid, we banged through the emergency exit leading onto the roof. More alarms began to blare, but it didn't matter as they obviously already knew where we were headed. Oliver lowered me to my feet before striding over to the edge of the roof nearest the target building. He moved along the edge gazing around until he reached a spot with a security light mounted on a pole right at the roof's edge. He reached out with both hands and shook the pole hard and it barely budged. Satisfied, he pulled an arrow from his quiver and quickly attached the end of a fine wire leading to a spool hanging from his waist. In only seconds he was ready and with one smooth motion notched the arrow to the bow, pulled back on the drawstring, and loosed.

By now I had joined him at the edge and we both watched as the arrow arched across the intervening distance until it embedded itself firmly into the wall about a foot above a wide glass window. Oliver pressed a button on a small remote and I knew special barbs were being activated to further anchor the arrow so it could support our weight.

Oliver climbed up onto the narrow four foot tall parapet and then tied the other end of the wire around the pole about eighteen inches above his head. When he was done, he gave the cable an experimental tug. With a quick nod of his head that the wire would hold, he swung his bow over the wire to use as an improvised support.

"Felicity, we have to go," he said, gesturing in my direction that I should climb up onto the parapet next to him.

I took another look over the edge at the long drop to the pavement far below us. Forcing a visible shudder, I moved slowly over to him and then raised a hand hesitantly in his direction.

He quickly pulled me up next to him. I was just leaning in to do my Princess Leia kiss when men with assault rifles came banging through the emergency exit door which had swung shut behind us. Oliver instantly kicked us off the edge and we began sliding down the wire steadily picking up speed. The wind was abruptly whipping about us and I almost cursed out loud at my missed opportunity.

Oliver had his strong left arm wrapped around my back and I had my left arm over his right shoulder which left my head pointed back over his left shoulder. We were less than halfway down the wire when I saw the first head appear over the roof's edge. Almost immediately I saw the man raise his rifle and a muzzle flash bloomed in the dark sky. I watched as the projectile whistled by six feet to my right. Then I watched as he and his three compatriots continued to fire, some of the rounds starting to get dangerously close.

I had to protect Oliver and somehow manage to do it without him catching on. Carefully, I shifted my position until I had clambered onto his back.

"Felicity, stop moving. You're going to make us fall," Oliver hissed, as I felt his grip shift on the bow which was supporting us.

Just then one of the snipers found the range; three rounds slammed into my back. Stretching my protective field to encompass Oliver while controlling our motion so we wouldn't start swinging from the momentum of the impacts required more delicate finesse with my gifts than was usually needed. And now, in addition to worrying about Oliver not noticing that I had just been hit, I would have to worry about either him or Digg spotting the sudden new holes in my black jacket. Tonight, things kept getting more and more complicated.

At least no more rounds found their mark and Oliver must not have realized anything had happened. Five seconds later he crashed, feet-first, through the glass window in front of us with me still clinging to his back.

We slammed to the floor and then rolled several times before coming to a stop. I managed to absorb most of the initial impact and then somehow ended up sprawled on top of Oliver. I leaned forward and planted the quick kiss I had intended to do while we had still been up on the rooftop.

"For luck," I said, as I pulled quickly back before I lost myself in his firm lips. "I meant to do that like Princess Leia before we slid down the wire. Wait, did I just say that out loud?"

Once again I was blushing furiously and it wasn't all faked.

He stared at me for a minute with an unreadable expression in his eyes. Finally, he spoke.

"Felicity, you need to get off of me. We still need to get out of here before the bad guys catch up."

That's when I realized I was kneeling astride his waist, my black skinny-jean clad crotch pressed firmly against his green leather clad one. I'm sure my cheeks brightened by another five hundred degrees.

"Ah, right, sorry," I gasped out while climbing unsteadily to my feet, not missing the opportunity to run my hands across his impossible pecs.

Oliver merely nodded as he also climbed to his feet. Then, surprisingly, he reached out and clasped my hand before urging us forward. If only he wasn't wearing the stupid gloves.

The rest of the trip back to his secret lair below the club was completely trouble free. I did have to remember to never turn my back to either Oliver or Digg until we reached there and I changed into the spare set of clothing I kept for emergencies.

Still, it had been, without a doubt, the best night since I had come to Starling City!

Author's Note: Anyone interested in an Arrow story in a world with superheroes rather than the superhero-free version of the TV show?


	2. Chapter 2

[Author's Note: Wow! Over a thousand hits in the first two days, I have never had this much response to a new story. Also thanks for all the comments, I think they have helped to make this next chapter even better. And if you liked the first chapter, I think you are going to love the second one!]

Chapter 2

The euphoric 'buzz' from my little adventure with Oliver in search of information about the abduction of Carol Ferris lasted almost an hour. Then Oliver's and Digg's hovering really started to get on my nerves. It was like being trapped in a cage with a pair of Bengal Tigers. They circled around the room making phone calls, working on their weapons, sparring and exercising, the last of which was too pleasant of a distraction to fully ignore. But it seemed like every five minutes one or the other of them walked up behind me and stared over my shoulder at the screen, as though they had the faintest idea what the info being displayed even meant.

Of course, staring at my display wasn't going to do them a damned bit of good, as all it was displaying was a giant mass of rapidly scrolling numbers and letters that were nothing more than the status logs of the computer. A girl has to have some secrets, particularly when the heart of her computer is based on advanced alien technology.

Fortunately, since I had arrived on Earth ten years ago at the age of fourteen and ended up in the Midvale School for Girls, I had learned how to use my special gifts to hide my computer interactions. In this instance, I was taking advantage of the high refresh rate of my computer's display. The screen refreshed 240 times each second. For 239 of those times it was displaying the computer log files, which was all Oliver and Digg could see. Once each second for a little less than 0.0038 seconds it displayed a completely different image, which was the data from the A.I. quantum computer in my tablet. In the old days, when I was still in school, the much slower 60 hertz refresh rates meant mere humans would perceive just enough of a flicker to realize something weird was going on with my computer. But the new ones displayed the one flash of useful data so fast no normal human could even perceive it.

Having access to a powerful artificial intelligence made my job as a tech guru a whole lot easier. Usually, all I had to do was phrase my request as a simple question and the A.I. did all the heavy lifting. In this case, I merely had to ask it to decipher the data we had stolen from the opposition's server.

Of course, this particular A.I., which had arrived with me on my spaceship, had one really major drawback - it thought it was my MOTHER.

Okay, maybe I need to step back a little and explain. I was born in Argo City, eighteen months after the explosion which destroyed Krypton. Well, I wasn't born in the traditional human sense as all Kryptonian children are brought to term in birthing chambers, but that is neither here nor there. Anyway, Argo City had been blown clear of the planet during the final destructive spasms and my father, Zor-El, and the other scientists managed to keep it alive. But the radiation levels were slowly and steadily increasing due to all the Kryptonite blasted from the planet's core. By the time my fourteenth birthday was approaching, it was obvious to my father that the situation was untenable. Therefore he built a spaceship for my escape. But neither my father nor my mother, Alura, felt it was appropriate to send me out alone, so while my father built the ship, my mother modified an A.I. to be my assistant, my teacher, my confidant.

However, I'm not sure she ever told my father she was programming it with her personality. And before the world of Krypton had come to its abrupt and messy end, my mother's career had been as an emotive actress. There isn't any real equivalent on Earth to the emotive acting style in use on Krypton, due to current limitations of technology here. On Krypton, they had the ability to record the actors' emotions so you could feel what the character was experiencing in addition to watching the performance like you do here. And, apparently, my Mom was one of the best. However, that portion of her life was over before I was born and I didn't get to experience any of her productions until I found some data crystals in the ship after I reached Earth. And my Mom had been . . . ah, how to put this politely . . . my Mom had been . . . a real little drama queen and that aspect of her had come to dominate the A.I.'s personality.

She could interact with me through the computer's screen and she could also 'talk' to me by using ultrahigh frequencies that were beyond human hearing. When others were present, like now with Oliver and Digg, I usually limited my interaction to the keyboard. But at the moment I was so pissed at her, I had to talk to her. I mean, would you want to be getting 'love' advice from an A.I. that thinks it is your mother? No, me neither.

Therefore, I grabbed up the Bluetooth earpiece so I could fake I was talking to her on my phone.

"Mom, I do not want to talk about this right now. I am trying to work," I said into thin air knowing the A.I. could hear me through the audio pickups of the tablet which was lying on top of my computer workstation.

"_You need to strike while the iron is hot, as these humans would say_," replied the A.I. at the ultrahigh frequency only I could hear. "_You've been working down here in this hidden facility for almost five months and tonight was your first real connection. It's time to push things forward. Oh, you don't have to jump into the sack with him tonight, but at least get him alone in some more social setting for drinks and dinner_."

"Mother," I hissed, as I felt my cheeks once again turn bright red. Although I wasn't entirely sure whether it was from the idea of having sex with Oliver or the thought my mother, or at least my surrogate mother, was pushing me to do it. I mean, whose mother says something like that to her daughter unless the family's next stop was Jerry Springer?

I had been so focused on talking to the A.I., I hadn't realized Oliver had walked up behind me until he started to speak.

"Is that your Mother on the phone?" he asked. "I don't think you've ever mentioned her before. Could I say 'hi'? I know how mothers are, or at least my mother, and I'm sure she would appreciate hearing how important your work has been to Queen Industries."

I looked up, almost in a state of panic, and took in the expression on Oliver's face. He was being perfectly serious about wanting to talk to her. What was I going to do since the call was a fake? How could I gracefully say 'no' to that almost puppy-dog expression? With my gifts I can hold my breath effectively forever, yet suddenly I was almost hyperventilating and I could feel perspiration beading on my forehead. What was I going to do?

The A.I. solved my initial problem by remotely turning on my phone and activating the earpiece for real. "_Kara, I would be happy to speak to Oliver_."

Almost in a daze I watched my hand reach out, pick up the phone, toggle the button that transferred the call from the earpiece back to the handset, and then hand the phone to Oliver. It was only after he was lifting the phone to his ear that I remembered the last thing the A.I. had been telling me was that I needed to jump his bones. What the hell was the A.I. going to say to him? I almost buried my face in my hands.

"Hello, Mrs. Smoak. This is Oliver Queen. It is a pleasure to speak to you."

As he listened to the A.I.'s reply I found myself wondering whatever had possessed me to pick Smoak as my cover name. My birth name was Kara Zor-el. I had gone by Linda Lee for most of the time I had been on Earth. But when I needed to disappear for a while, what cover name did I pick? Felicity Smoak, a name that stuck out like a sore thumb. Why hadn't I picked something much more benign and safe like Felicity Brown or Felicity Smith or Felicity Porter?

"Of course, I would be happy to call you Alura," said Oliver, his words breaking through my wild musings and forcing my attention back to his face. "And may I just say what an unusual and beautiful name that is."

Oliver went back to listening and I took the opportunity to stare at his handsome face. He had been back from the island for almost six months, but still seemed to retain a rugged, dark tan. Of course, I had never met him before his five year sojourn on that island, so perhaps the tan was his natural appearance.

But then, even as I watched, an impossible shade of red suddenly bloomed across his cheeks.

OMG. OMG. OMG. What had the stupid A.I. said to garner that reaction? Had she just totally and forever screwed up my relationship with him?

I was in a state of utter panic when a flashing in my peripheral vision attracted my attention. The computer monitor was flashing 'URGENT' 'URGENT' 'URGENT' in alternating bright red and yellow letters. Although, at least for the moment, it was still only showing for one frame out of two hundred-forty so only I could see it.

Quickly, I typed a query on my keyboard, the conversation between Oliver and the A.I. momentarily forgotten, or at least forced into the background.

The flashing 'urgent' message disappeared as soon as I started typing and was replaced with the real message. The A.I. had broken the encryption on the data Oliver had fought so hard to secure. And the data identified three potential locations in Starling City where Carol Ferris could be being held. It was already performing a preliminary surveillance of these locations and had spotted Black Canary entering the one in the Glades.

Black Canary, my arch nemesis. Okay, okay, arch nemesis may be putting things a little too strongly. My competition is more accurate.

Who do you think is the most googled person on the planet? The President? Justin Timberlake? Brittany Spears (Skank!)? Well, at least in my little corner of this place we called Earth the most googled person is, without a doubt, Laurel Lance, Oliver's ex. 'Know your enemy,' is what the _Art of War_ says, and I have taken it to heart. I mean here is a woman who spent years with the man I love. A woman who has . . . dare I say it . . . who has had SEX with the man I love. She is definitely my enemy.

And therefore an almost unbelievable high percentage of the A.I.'s total capabilities are spent learning everything that can possibly be known about Laurel Lance. Every traffic cam, every ATM cam, simply every camera the A.I. can manage to access is used to monitor her every movement. What was that show, _Truman_? The one where the man's life was monitored twenty-four seven? Well, that was the kind of coverage I wanted of my opponent. Hell, I had even seeded a few of my own cameras at places she frequented that didn't have adequate coverage.

So I knew where she was virtually every second of the day and night. And that was how I had stumbled on her secret nocturnal adventures as Black Canary when they had started nine weeks ago. And that was how I had ended up following her to Gotham City during a long weekend about a month ago and surreptitiously watched a meeting between her and a woman in a wheelchair who went by the title 'Oracle', which seemed a little pretentious.

With all the sightings I had had of Black Canary running around in her cute little black outfit, it was almost a miracle she and Oliver in his _hood_ disguise hadn't yet crossed paths. She did keep a much lower profile than Oliver and didn't go around killing well-known public figures, but it seemed like it was just a matter of time.

And I had to wonder, if and when their paths crossed, if Oliver would realize she was meta-human. Everyone, including even Oliver lost out on that island, had to have heard of meta-humans by now or at least the most famous ones like Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash. But that didn't mean anyone thought there were meta-humans right here in Starling City.

But the question at the moment was what was the Black Canary doing at one of the locations where they might be holding Carol Ferris? Okay, she might be my personal sworn enemy, but I couldn't believe she would be in league with the bad guys. No, she must have gotten a tip from either her day job as a lawyer or from her father the cop. She must be there trying to rescue the other woman. But I wasn't sure she was up to the task alone after all the men we had run into at a place that merely held computer servers and not real live hostages.

What should I do? I hated to go provide back up to my personal enemy myself. But if I did nothing and something happened to her AND Oliver found out, he would never, ever forgive me.

But if I told Oliver and he went alone and discovered who Black Canary was, it might drive them back together and that would certainly never do.

So the only possible answer was to go with Oliver to keep the situation under control. Certainly I could come up with some reason why he might need my tech skills.

Therefore I turned from the monitor in Oliver's direction to broach the topic and that's when I saw the weird way he was looking at me. What had the A.I. said now, I wondered.

Then abruptly the scariest thing I have ever imagined popped into my head. Scarier than the time I had helped Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League battle Darkseid. It had been a long, hard, vicious fight that had left me battered, bruised and very near death before the monster had been defeated.

But even near death, I hadn't been as afraid as I was at this moment.

That mother of an A.I. had done some crazy things in the past, but never anything remotely like this. OMG . . . OMG . . . OMG. But from the look in Oliver's eyes, I was terribly afraid she had done it this time. OMG . . . OMG . . . Oh, my God. What if . . . what if the stupid freaking A.I. had . . . I can barely get this out . . . OMG . . . What if it had used the V-word!

I mean it's not like I haven't tried. I mean, is it my fault Jerro the Merboy in the end didn't have . . . ah, how can I put this delicately . . . didn't have equipment compatible with mine?

And is it my fault that I had only gotten to the heavy petting stage with Dick Malverne, my college boyfriend, when he accidentally saw me bend a steel i-beam in two and went running and screaming for the hills at the thought I might do the same thing to him in a moment of unbridled passion? I mean, come on, I have a modicum of self-control. Well, I think I do, but I guess it hasn't been put to the ultimate test yet.

So you can see, the V-situation is not all my fault. No, not really.

I knew all the blood must have drained from my face leaving me pale as a ghost as I stared blankly at Oliver; my mind racing in hopeless circles, the main thought being how this was the last straw and I was going to wipe my mother's personality from the A.I. I had come close to doing it several times before, but at the last moment had always relented as the surrogate mother personality was the last vestige I had of home, at least until I figured out some way to rescue my parents. But if the A.I. had used the V-word, it was time for it to go.

I desperately needed time to figure out what I was going to do. And the most obvious distraction for Oliver was the situation with Carol. Therefore I turned my attention back to the computer monitor and typed, 'Sanitize and then display the data'. I think I only broke the 'y' key as my fingers pounded away.

Instantly, the computer went 'ding' and the scrolling lines of numbers and letters were replaced with the information I had been viewing. I stared at it for a moment, as though seeing it for the first time and then forced myself to speak.

"Okay, I've broken the encryption algorithm. Let's see . . . I have three possible locations where they could be holding Carol."

I typed a couple of keystrokes and a map of Starling City was displayed with three locations highlighted with red 'X's. "I'm pulling up the nearest video feeds now."

A video feed popped up on the screen at each of the three locations - the one in the Glades showing the clip of Black Canary entering the building.

Oliver's finger stabbed the screen at the location showing Laurel. The other two locations weren't showing any signs of activity. "Can you zoom in on that one? For some reason, the person looks familiar."

I dutifully reached up to the touchscreen and did a pinch-to-zoom motion. And just like on all the cop shows, the image simultaneously expanded and sharpened. Ah, the joys of having a powerful A.I. at your beck and call, at least when it wasn't trying its darnedest to sabotage my love life . . . potential love life . . . whatever.

"That's . . . Laurel!" exclaimed Oliver. "What the hell is she doing there?"

"Ah, maybe she got a tip that something was going down?" I suggested.

"But she wouldn't be so stupid as to go out there alone, would she?" Oliver demanded, as though I might somehow know.

I shrugged, happy for the moment Oliver's attention was focused on something besides me and whatever my fake Mom might have said.

"I don't know, but we better go back her up."

Oliver looked at me and shook his head. "No, you better stay here. Digg and I can handle it. It's too dangerous."

Oliver was again looking at me sort of funny, like I was suddenly too fragile for fieldwork even though he had been okay with me going on the mission to secure the data we needed, the data that had identified the building Black Canary had just entered.

I shook my head and retorted. "What if you need computer systems hacked before things are over? How am I going to do it from back here?"

Slowly Oliver nodded. "Fine. But you stick close to me."

He handed my phone back. I jammed it into my shoulder bag along with my tablet. "So is my Mom the Jewish Mother from Hell or what?"

Oliver shook his head. "I think she just worries about you. Just like my Mom worries about me."

I tried to let his words mollify me, really I did. But I still had an overwhelming urge to hit something. What I really wanted to do was smash the stupid A.I., but it was too valuable and would be impossible to replace. Hopefully, Carol was being held in some kind of massively overbuilt bank vault I could smash to smithereens. Without anyone witnessing it, of course!

End of Chapter 2

Author's Note: Well, what do you think, is the story heading in an interesting direction? Am I doing a good job of blending Supergirl and Felicity without losing the essence of Felicity from the show? Anything you particularly loved or hated about this chapter? Anything you would like to see in the future in this story? The more interesting comments I receive the better the story will become as I can incorporate aspects that might not have otherwise occurred to me.

Also, fair warning, I don't expect to provide updates this frequently on a regular basis. This time one of the comments just triggered something in my head and the whole chapter seemed to pop into existence all at once and I knew exactly how everything needed to flow. That usually doesn't happen and it takes a lot of work to write something really fun and interesting. So don't expect another update so soon (unless, again, someone leaves a comment that really inspires me).

Have a great day!

Duane


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As usual, Oliver had taken his bike and I was schlepping along with Digg in his big Suburban that looked like something Schwarzenegger would have driven in one of his old movies. It was painted jet black with darkened windows, a heavy-duty front bumper designed to push its way through anything, and secret compartments filled to overflowing with an assortment of weapons - both legal and highly illegal.

But I wasn't thinking about that as I stared out the window at the surrounding devastation. The route from the Lair to the building where we had seen Laurel and where we suspected Carol Ferris was being held, skirted past some of the worst areas hit by Merlyn's artificial earthquake device. Three months later and other than a cursory search for survivors, nothing had been done to clean up the mess or start to rebuild. It was like we were in some backwater third world country rather than in the heart of America.

And, as always, seeing the homeless wandering through the collapsed and burned-out structures drew my thoughts back to that night and how there must have been something I could have done differently.

I had been in the Lair talking Detective Lance through the procedure on how to disarm the device. It had been utterly weird to find myself helping the same man who had earlier in the day dragged me to the police station and questioned me about illegal hacking, but it was an emergency and thousands of lives were at stake.

Things had been going as smoothly as you could hope for under the circumstances until the detective accidentally tripped a second trigger. The timer had dropped from seven minutes to two minutes in an instant and initiated its activation sequence. And the man had simply given up. For the first time since arriving in Starling City I had seriously broken my self-imposed rule about not using my superpowers. With the lives of tens of thousands on the line, I had raced over there at superspeed, done one quick pass without slowing while simultaneously using my heat vision to burn out the key components, and then raced back to the Lair. Then it had taken the hardest cajoling I had ever done to get the detective to go back over and cut a couple more wires so he could take credit for defusing the device.

And it had all been for nothing. Merlyn had had a second device and by the time Oliver got word to me, it had been too late. The first device had been in the most obvious location, where Merlyn's wife had died. I had had only seconds to search for the second device located deep below street level. If the devices had put out some distinctive radiation, that might have been enough, but they didn't. I was flying at a thousand feet, scanning with my X-ray vision, when the device went off. I had rescued those I could over the next several minutes, but it had barely made a dent. Three months later and the official total stood at 629 missing and 4593 confirmed dead - including Oliver's old friend, Tommy Merlyn.

"Felicity, we're here. Focus," said Digg, not unkindly, from the driver's seat. He must have realized I was lost deep in my thoughts. But then I had seen his eyes go similarly unfocussed on several previous occasions when we had been passing through the areas of the worst devastation. I'm sure the same 'what could I have done different' thoughts plagued him, too.

I forced myself to straighten up from where I had been slouched against the window. The building we had seen in the video feed was coming up on our right. Digg cruised slowly by and then turned right at the next corner to circle around. I'm sure he was focused on possible entry points.

I was using my x-ray vision to focus on the interior in hopes of spotting Laurel or Carol Ferris. Or at least that was what I was trying to do. The building had once been a giant factory or warehouse of some kind. It was old, probably dating way back to Starling City's first great construction boom in the 1880's. And it looked like it had been sitting there abandoned for at least fifty years. But during the long ago days when it had been in use, it must have been painted countless times with thick, lead-based paint. It probably was choked to the gills with asbestos, too, but that wasn't an issue to me at the moment like the nearly quarter inch thick layer of lead paint or the heavily leaded, old-school windows. The dark, gloomy building, which seemed to hang like a pall over the neighborhood, was almost as opaque to me as to anyone else. I could get occasional glimpses through broken windows, but I didn't spot anyone – friend or foe.

When we got to the back of the massive building, which sprawled over an area equal to four city blocks, we found Oliver's bike parked behind a row of old, overflowing dumpsters. Oliver himself was nowhere in sight. I began scanning the surrounding area and quickly spotted him up on the building's roof. He managed to reach the tops of buildings so quickly, I sometimes wondered if he secretly had the ability to fly like me.

Digg pulled in beside the bike and shut down the big truck.

"Do you see him anywhere?" he asked at little more than a whisper, as he reached past my knees and pulled two pair of night vision goggles from the glove compartment. He handed the first pair to me and then slipped on the second pair, although for the moment he left them perched up on his forehead.

I made a show of gazing around before pointing through the windshield in the direction of the building, whose nearest wall was about two hundred feet from our position. "There," I exclaimed, also at a whisper. "I saw someone silhouetted on the roof, but now they have ducked down. It must be him."

"Damn that Oliver," hissed Digg. "We are supposed to be a team. He was supposed to wait until we were in position."

Digg opened his door and slid out while simultaneously activating his earpiece. "Please hold up. We have just arrived and need three minutes."

"I thought I saw movement and I had to follow. Catch up as soon as you can," Oliver whispered in reply through my earpiece.

Digg was moving around to the back of the Suburban and I opened my door and followed suit. When I got there, he was strapping on a vest and immediately grabbed another one and extended it in my direction. Since I couldn't explain that I didn't need one, I was forced to accept. To free up my hands, I slid the night vision goggles on my head, annoyed about what the useless device would do to my hair, and lowered the shoulder bag containing my tablet and other electronic gear to the ground. At least seeing all the devastation throughout much of the Glades had taken the edge off my anger towards my surrogate mother. And all the destruction had also tempered the urge to break things.

By the time I had the vest on and all the straps adjusted, Digg was fully weaponed up with a pair of handguns, a pump-action shotgun on a sling, a brace of flash-bang grenades at his waist, and what looked like a bazooka strapped to his back. He offered me a gun, but I shook my head. Felicity might have gone out into the field with them a couple of times on missions, but she wasn't yet ready to take the big step of carrying a weapon.

Digg lowered the rear hatch and then pressed a button on his remote to lock the oversized car. With all the miscreants who wandered these burnt out areas of the Glade at night, there was no point unduly tempting one of them since the car still held enough ordnance to start, and perhaps win, a small war.

Gesturing for me to follow, Digg raced across the gap separating us from the old factory in a crouch. I followed suit, scanning the area as I ran. I didn't see the heat signature of anyone within a quarter mile except hundreds of giant rats. It made me glad when I had changed my top and jacket back at the Lair that I had retained my form-fitting black skinny jeans. The last thing I wanted was some rat trying to crawl up the inside of my pant leg.

We reached the side of the building without incident. The street lights were now all far away and the quarter moon was behind the building leaving the immediate area in shadows. Digg lowered his night vision goggles down over his eyes and pressed the button to activate them. I toyed with similarly lowering mine, but decided against it as they would just interfere with my true visual capabilities. Instead, I reached out and clasped Digg's free left hand.

When he glanced in my direction, I shrugged and whispered, "The goggles don't fit well over my glasses."

Digg nodded and then began moving slowly along the side of the building looking for an entrance. We had gone about thirty feet when I spotted the incongruous keypad. Shifting my vision further up the electromagnetic spectrum, I could see the pulse of electricity in the wires extending from the keypad into the wall. Obviously, the building wasn't quite the derelict it had seemed on first inspection.

"Felicity, can you get us through? Else I will blow the door."

Blowing the door sounded like it could attract a lot of unwanted attention, so I quickly pulled my tablet from the shoulder bag. I angled the screen away from Digg's light enhancing goggles so as to not leave him blind and then flicked it on.

Quickly I typed, 'Can you open the door?'

'Working,' flashed across the screen followed by an old Windows style hourglass. Sometimes my Mom had the stupidest sense of humor. Six seconds later the hourglass disappeared and was replaced by, 'Code Number is 007.'

I almost laughed at the number, just what we needed tonight, a villain who was a James Bond fan. I wondered if he would be carrying a white cat and speak with a bad fake Italian or Russian accent.

As the James Bond theme song from 'You Only Live Twice' played in the back of my mind, I reached out and keyed in the sequence. The keypad had been located next to a large vehicle-sized door with a much smaller inset pedestrian-sized door. I was afraid the large door would start opening with a wake-the-dead level of screeching and grinding of metal. But if the big and small doors were activated by different codes, Mom must have found the one for the small door, as it gave a barely audible 'click' and then opened a couple of inches.

After I had stowed the tablet back in my bag, Digg grabbed my hand and then used his gun hand to pull the door open just wide enough for us to slip through.

Once we were passed the obscuring, lead covered outer walls, the building's cavernous interior became visible to me like some grand old Technicolor movie, well at least the portions that weren't hidden by lead painted interior walls. And immediately I spotted the thermal images and skeletal outlines of four people. One was in the rafters far above us and had to be Oliver and the other three were below us in some subbasement level. Two of the ones below were together - one standing and one sitting, but neither moving. The other one was about a hundred feet away and slowly moving in the direction of the other two. Through the thick reinforced concrete floor I couldn't resolve much more than their skeletal structure, but it was enough to convince me all three were women. That most likely made the moving one, Laurel, and the seated one, Carol. So our opponent, whoever she was, was a woman. Interesting.

Without thinking, I reached up an activated my earpiece. "They're in the basement," I whispered before remembering I couldn't explain how I could see through the floor with my X-ray vision.

"Are you certain, Felicity?" asked Oliver.

"Ah, just call it woman's intuition," I caged, hoping he wouldn't ask for more details.

"Right, I'm on my way down. See if you can find some stairs."

Digg began moving along the right wall and I could see stairs about forty feet in front of us. Oliver was repelling down on the far side of the room and was going to land almost on top of a different set of stairs. I simply knew we were going to end up taking different routes down to the basement and it left me with an almost queasy feeling. If this was the place where they were holding Carol Ferris, it should be crawling with a whole army of guards. Yet there were none. My years of experience with the JLA had taught me the hard lesson that when you came up against a single opponent instead of many, that opponent was usually a metahuman. And neither Oliver nor Digg had ever gone up against a metahuman to the best of my knowledge and would be in way over their heads. At least if we were all together I could protect them, but that was going to be extremely challenging if the two men were at opposite ends of the basement and I was trapped with Digg by our holding of hands.

But before I could think of any plan to divert our course to join up with Oliver, we had reached the stairs and Digg was leading us down.

The stairs seemed to descend forever and we had to be at least seventy-five feet below street level before we reached the bottom. One analytical corner of my mind wondered what had possessed the original builders to create such a large underground space. Surely when the building had been constructed back in the 1880's land must have been cheap and it would have cost less to expand outward rather than down. But regardless of their long-lost motivation, the giant basement existed now. And it was filled with massive machines and equipment that I quickly surmised must have powered the facility above. But the equipment had been dead and dormant for decades, the levels only occupants until recently the ubiquitous rats. My super-hearing could hear them scurrying about in their thousands and I couldn't suppress a shudder. I had the strength to toss building-sized objects into orbit, but stupid rats still gave me the heebie-jeebies. I must have had a bad encounter with the Krypto-rats of Argo City when I had been a really small child.

Digg started forward and I carefully nudged his trajectory to the right in the direction of the pair I guessed were Carol Ferris and her captor. We would be approaching the pair from their left. Oliver, who had reached the bottom of his stairs on the far side of the sprawling room, would be approaching them from their right. The third unknown figure, who I suspected was Laurel, was approaching them from front and center. Perhaps a three pronged assault would work if I could coordinate our timing. Although it would definitely be best if Digg and I reached them first so I could scope out the situation and simply take down the metahuman hard and fast, if it became necessary. I subtly urged Digg to move faster.

Unfortunately, we were slowed by needing to take a zigzagging route due to all the large and hulking machinery in our path. Therefore we only reached the large cleared space at the end of the basement mere seconds ahead of the others.

The many inches thick cast iron machines covered in many layers of thick lead paint had continued to obscure my view of the pair ahead until we were almost in the clear. We crouched down to peer around the last large machine. The end of the basement was only lit by a trio of battery-powered arc lamps on eight foot stands. The two women, one standing and one tied to a chair, were well lit, but the surrounding area was still filled with almost impenetrable gloom. However the bright lights were enough to momentarily blind Digg, who was still wearing the night vision goggles. With a muffled curse, he pulled them free and rapidly blinked his eyes in an attempt to clear the afterimage.

I didn't have that problem, but after my first good glimpse of the standing woman, I cursed, too, and I'm afraid mine wasn't nearly as muted as Digg's had been.

What the freaking hell was she doing here, I wondered. I had thought we were going up against some powerful metahuman, but this was ten, no, one thousand times worse.

My true arch-enemy stood over there. I jokingly thought of Laurel as my arch-enemy, but she was really only competition for Oliver's heart and affection. But Lena had tried to kill me on more than one occasion and had very nearly succeeded.

"Who is she?" asked Digg in an almost inaudible whisper that had been breathed straight into my ear. He must have read something in my face and realized I recognized her.

"Lena Thorul, my old school roommate," I whispered back, as I continued to gaze at the tall, slender brunette. She stood five eleven to my own five foot nine. Next to her impossible supermodel good looks, I was so plain-looking it almost hurt.

Lena Thorul was still how I mostly thought of her. I hadn't learned Thorul was an anagram of her real last name, Luthor, until shortly before our falling out.

And, unfortunately, Lena knew my secret, too. Of course, that wasn't the scariest part. No, the scariest part was that Lena was, without a doubt, THE smartest person on the planet. Which was beyond annoying considering she blamed all of her troubles, from the death of her mother to the incarceration of her insane father on my cousin, Clark. And once she had learned of my familial relationship with him, she had, by extension, come to blame me, too. She had vowed to destroy my family in the same way she believed my family had destroyed hers. And if anyone was capable of achieving that goal against a pair of Kryptonians, it was her.

I should have acted as soon as I saw her, but as frequently happened, I let my thoughts get away from me. Therefore before I did anything, Oliver must have made some noise or tripped some sensor. Instantly, Lena lifted a snubbed nosed Uzi she had been holding in her right hand and sprayed a shower of bullets in Oliver's direction.

And Oliver hadn't been sufficiently cautious or perhaps he had let his success against the eight attackers from our earlier encounter go to his head, as he had stepped clear of his cover and now stood in the open with his bow raised and an arrow cocked. But the arrow wasn't going to offer any protection from the two dozen bullets racing in his direction.

Everything seemed to grind almost to a halt as I shifted into superspeed. I pulled down my glasses and then cranked up my heat vision and vaporized the bullets one-by-one. The closest never got within ten feet of Oliver.

My racing heart and body had just slowed to a human pace when Lena lowered her weapon and began to speak.

"Well, well, well. Linda, I have known you were in Starling City from the first day you arrived. I wondered if you would show up tonight and I guess I just got my answer."

Then abruptly I heard a series of small explosions far above me, near the ceiling of the tall basement. Glancing up, I saw a large piece of equipment freefalling directly towards me that had been suspended there and which had to weigh many tons.

The bullets had been so tiny and moving so fast; Oliver and Digg couldn't have seen what I had done. In the gloom of the basement, Oliver might not see what was about to happen next, but Digg kneeling beside me couldn't helped but see. But there was nothing for it, unless I was willing to let Digg die, which I wasn't, either I had to move him out of the way using superspeed or I had to deflect the large falling object. In the end I decided on the latter course.

Straightening, I caught the giant twenty-by-twenty-by thirty foot assembly with one hand without even a groan of effort and tossed it to the far end of the basement. It crashed with a resounding boom that shook things like another of Merlyn's devices had gone off. Debris and dust that hadn't been disturbed for decades rained down everywhere.

Digg had reflexively raised his arm to protect his head, but now he lowered it and stared at me with a mixture of awe and at least a hint of fear. I heard a muffled 'What the hell?'

But before I could do anything else, Laurel stepped out from between another pair of the giant machines. Her black outfit and cute little black mask blended into the surrounding darkness.

"You bitch, you deserve to die!" shouted Laurel.

I had no idea what her grudge was with Lena, whether it involved her just-concluded attempted attack on Oliver or something else entirely. And before I could contemplate the thought any further, she opened her mouth and let forth with a metahuman-powered sonic screech.

I had never directly experienced her gift before and it was like knives were driving through my super-powered ears and directly into my brain. I collapsed to my knees and barely avoided collapsing all the way to the floor. My hands immediately sprang up to cover my ears, but it didn't seem to do any good.

Just enough of my brain was functioning around the pain to see Digg collapse to the ground beside me and lay there unmoving. Similarly, I could see Oliver collapse on the far side of the room.

Lena collapsed from the ungodly sound, too, but she never reached the floor. No, with her head still a good foot above the floor, she vanished in a sudden flash of light.

I would have cursed except for the impossible pain in my head. I had seen this before. As I said, Lena was without a doubt the smartest, most dangerous human on the planet. She had created a personal teleportation device that teleported her clear whenever she lost consciousness. She had a secret lair somewhere on the planet, not that I or anyone else in the JLA had ever been able to discover its location, and at the first hint of personal danger she simply vanished. Definitely, she was my most dangerous foe.

With Lena gone, Laurel let her screech fade away and then I watched as she ran in Oliver's direction. I slowly climbed back to my feet and took in the scene.

Carol Ferris sat tied to the chair, her head lolling in response to Laurel's action. With all of her own abilities, I suddenly wondered what Lena had wanted from the woman. What did she possess that Lena couldn't achieve on her own? And then for the first time, it sank in that Carol was wearing a gray flight suit rather than business or casual attire. Was that significant?

But with Lena gone, those questions could wait until the woman awoke. My eyes automatically shifted to where Laurel knelt with Oliver's head cradled in her lap. How was he going to react when he woke in her arms? Was I about to lose him forever? Or would he remember the black-clad girl's inhuman gift and be repulsed?

Of course, Laurel's gift didn't hold a candle to mine and if hers turned out to be enough to scare him away, what about mine? Oh, my secret might still be safe as the vaporized bullet thing would have been impossible for him to see and with the shadowy darkness, he might not have registered that I had tossed the impossibly large machine. But even if my secret hadn't been revealed tonight, it would come out eventually and I had to be prepared to deal with it. But I would rather it was later rather than sooner.

Then my eyes glanced down to where Digg lay unconscious at my feet. He had definitely seen me toss the giant machine which had come within mere feet of crushing him. The genie was out of the bottle with him. I wondered if I could come up with some reason that would convince him to keep quiet for the moment. Because I knew in my heart I needed more time to prepare Oliver so he didn't end up running for the hills like Dick Malverne had done back in college. I desperately wanted to move forward with things and Oliver was the first man I had ever met with whom I could picture myself jumping in the sack, as the A.I. had so bluntly put it.

And if Lena's interference had permanently screwed things up between me and Oliver, she would rue the day we had ended up roommates at the Midvale School for Girls!

[Author's Note: Ah, the plot begins to thicken, as Kara's past begins to rear its ugly head. And it looks like at least Digg is going to be in on her secret. What about Oliver? Personally, I think it would be fun if he stays in the dark for a little longer and has time to wonder about what secret Digg and Felicity are suddenly sharing. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Also, I'm thinking Wonder Woman may make an appearance somewhere in the next few chapters. I find it is easiest to write when I have a face to go along with the character. So, if Wonder Woman were to make an appearance on the TV show, what actress would you most like to see play her?]


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Part 1

I scanned Digg's body one more time with my X-ray vision even as I was pulling off the night vision goggles which were still strapped around my forehead. His heart was beating normally and he was breathing just fine. For the moment, I had to assume he was simply unconscious and hadn't suffered any permanent neurological damage.

Dropping the goggles, I started undoing the straps of the equally pointless bullet-proof vest when my hand came into contact with my shoulder bag and I remembered the A.I. Quickly, I pulled the tablet out and typed a command asking Mom to start looking into anything unusual in Starling City during the last six months that could be attributed to Lena. She had clearly stated she had been keeping tabs on me the whole time I had been here. And since it would have been more logical to have grabbed Ferris closer to her home in Coast City, there was probably some additional reason she had done it here.

Then, after restowing the tablet, I went back to work on the vest's straps while beginning to move in the direction to where Laurel still sat slowly rocking and holding Oliver's head. Halfway there I detoured over to the woman tied to the chair. Her head lolled as lifelessly as Digg's, but she certainly wouldn't be comfortable if she stayed in that position until she awoke. I burned through the heavy shackles which held her to the chair and then carefully lowered her to the ground. Her flight suit had 'Ferris' stitched over the right breast pocket, if I had needed any additional confirmation of who she was beyond her slack face which matched the photos I had pulled from the internet earlier. It was hard to believe Oliver had asked me to start looking for the woman only six hours earlier, it felt a lot more like six days.

With nothing else obvious to do for the woman until she hopefully woke on her own, and realizing my actions were just putting off the confrontation I had to have with Laurel, I climbed back to my feet and forced myself to assume a brisk stride as I made my way over to where she still knelt. Just as I reached her the last buckle came free and I paused to lift the vest over my head. When my eyes were free, I found Laurel staring up at me with a surprised expression on her face like she had been so caught up with Oliver she hadn't even realized I had walked across the width of the room.

"How . . . how can you be up and about?" she asked with almost a stutter. "No one remains conscious when I project that call."

I pulled off my glasses and stuck them in the pocket of my jacket. I needed to be Kara at the moment, not Felicity. No, I didn't need to be Kara, I needed to be Supergirl. It is weird and a little scary. Sometimes it was like I was four separate people: Felicity, Linda, Kara, and Supergirl. They all seemed to have slightly different personalities. And at the moment I needed to be Supergirl, the strongest, toughest, most commanding persona.

"I'm no more a normal human than you are. Your gift has no effect on me," I stated. It wasn't strictly true, but she didn't need to know that. "Now, what do you know about Lena, what she is doing in Starling City, and why she kidnapped Carol Ferris?"

She was staring up at me and I realized I had put my hands on my hips in my famous Supergirl pose. However I'm sure it lost a lot while I stood there in ordinary street clothes.

"I know you. You're Felicity . . . ah, Felicity something . . . You do IT work for Queen Industries. Oliver has mentioned you."

I could see wheels turning in her head as she tried to grasp the situation.

"How long are they going to be out?" I asked, ignoring her remark for the moment. Well, at least verbally. Some silly little girl in the back of my head was positively giddy at the thought Oliver was talking about me. Oh, I'm sure it was nothing romantic, but it still briefly made my heart race.

Laurel's eyes drifted back down to Oliver's face for a moment, but then she shook her head as though to clear her thoughts.

"The woman will be out the longest, as she was directly in front of me. For her I'd say an hour. Since Oliver was off to the side, probably forty-five minutes."

"Fine, then we have time to talk," I stated. I knew I should focus on Lena first, as she was by far the biggest danger. But, hopefully, since Lena had been standing next to Carol when Laurel had made that ungodly sound, Lena would be unconscious for an hour, too, wherever the teleportation device had taken her. However as urgent as the situation was with Lena, I had to know how long Laurel had known Oliver was the Hood. "How long have you known about Oliver's secret activities?"

Laurel's hand swept back across his face and then lingered on the green hood pushed partway back, as though she was seeing it and recognizing its significance for the first time.

"Oliver . . . Oliver is the Hood? I . . . I had no idea. It wasn't until he was falling and his face caught the light that I recognized it was him." Then she glanced up at me and put two and two together. "You're here with him, aren't you? You're part of this whole vigilante thing, too, aren't you?"

Before she gave me a chance to reply, not that I had any idea how to respond to that question, she continued.

"And who exactly are you? You're metahuman like me?"

"My real name is Kara. We can go into the details later. Right now you need to tell me everything you know about Lena Luthor. She is far more dangerous than you know."

"Lena Luthor? Is she the one who vanished in that flash of light? How did she do that? She should have been unconscious."

I was getting a sudden sinking feeling.

"Yes, that was Lena Luthor, perhaps the deadliest criminal mastermind on the planet. If you weren't here about her, then what are you doing here tonight?"

"Oracle called me and said Carol Ferris was being held captive in one of three places and that I needed to rescue her. Since this location was in the Glades, I deemed it was the most likely, so I tried here first."

I shook my head. Laurel seemed to be benefitting from a big dollop of beginner's luck to have found this place on the first try and then survived her first encounter with Lena. I knew several experienced superheroes who couldn't say the same.

Then I had to wonder about the woman called Oracle. It sounded like she had accessed to the same data we had, if she also had come up with a list of three potential places where Ferris might be found. Of course, our source of data on the surface hadn't appeared to have any connection to Lena. I wondered if Oracle's source did.

"I think we need to go talk to this Oracle," I stated. "I need to know how she got the information that Ferris might be here and whether she knew Lena was involved."

"We can't. She's halfway across the country in Gotham City."

I shook my head. "No, we have plenty of time to get there and back before Oliver and the others wake up."

"Who are you?" Laurel asked again.

"I'm Kara . . . Kara Zor-El."

She stared blankly at me for a moment and then her eyes widen as my name sank in. "You're . . . you're Supergirl?" She asked, and if she had been standing I think she would have taken a step back.

I nodded and then extended my hand down to her. She clasped it half in a handshake and half to pull herself to her feet.

"Wow, I was a huge fan of yours back when I was in school – almost a girl-crush I guess you could say," she blushed as though she thought that might not have come out quite the way she had intended. "It is such an honor to meet you."

"Great, I can do autographs later," I said in an attempt to slightly lighten the mood. "Now, we need to be on our way."

"Can . . . can we just leave him here?" she asked.

I suddenly realized she was right. I had no idea if Lena might revive a lot quicker than the others and return. I didn't know if she had already gotten the information she wanted from Ferris or would return for another try. And I couldn't simply leave Oliver and Digg to potentially fall into her clutches.

The question was what to do with them until they awoke or I returned from Gotham. If Lena had truly known I had been in Starling City for the last six months, she could have been tracking my movements in the same way I had been tracking Laurel's. So if I took them back to the Lair or back to my place, those would probably be the first place she would look. And the same would go for taking them to Oliver's estate or Digg's apartment. I was around them so much, Lena had to know about them and where they lived.

Even Laurel's place might not be safe. If Laurel hadn't known about Lena then Lena might not know about Black Canary. But Laurel was Oliver's friend and knowing Lena's usual thoroughness, if she was monitoring me she was doubtlessly monitoring my friends and even their friends just in case the information was someday useful. So Laurel's place was definitely out, too.

"Does anyone here in Starling City know your secret?" I asked.

She appeared to hesitate for a moment and then nodded, "Just my father."

I had only encountered Detective Lance a couple of times since the day he had dragged me in for questioning and then we had been forced to work as a team in a futile attempt to save the Glades from Merlyn's devices. And at least on those subsequent occasions he hadn't actively accused me of doing anything illegal and seemed to have mellowed, at least slightly, about the Vigilante's activities. If he was keeping Laurel's secret, perhaps I could trust him with mine. And even thorough Lena was unlikely to be keeping close tabs on my boss' ex-girlfriend's father.

"We are going to have to leave them with your father while we go to Gotham. Help me get Oliver's hood off, we can't let your father in on Oliver's secret; it's not our secret to reveal."

I watched as she thought the situation through. Then with a nod she knelt back down and began working at the fasteners down the front of Oliver's green hoodie.

I paused for a moment to stare down at Laurel. She had been my competition for Oliver for months and now we were forced to work as a team. And she knew my big secret. How had things come to this? But with a shake of my head, I bent to help her. We had bigger, more urgent fish to fry.

Quickly, I tossed Oliver over my shoulder before straightening back up. Once Laurel had also stood back up, I asked, "What's your father's address?"

"He has a house in The Heights. Its address is 7920 Kenwood."

The Heights was a respectable, working class neighborhood, unlike The Glades. And it was on the other side of downtown. We definitely couldn't drive there while leaving a usable amount of time for a trip to Gotham City. Not that I would have wanted to waste time driving even if it was only three blocks away. We would just have to come back for Digg's car and Oliver's bike later, assuming they would still be there.

"Give me your hand," I requested while holding out my own.

Laurel only hesitated for a moment before extending hers.

I lightly clasped her fingers and extended my personal field to encompass the three of us. Hopefully Ferris and Digg would be okay here long enough for me to drop off Laurel and Oliver first. It shouldn't take more than a minute.

Almost immediately I lifted the three of us into the air and climbed for the distant ceiling. I didn't want to take time to maneuver us through the cramped stairwells, so I turned my attention ahead and cranked my heat vision up to full power. Before we were halfway there, an eight foot diameter hole had formed where the six foot thick reinforced ceiling had vaporized. In seconds we were passing through the hole; intense heat still radiating from the half-melted perimeter.

I was just getting ready to repeat the process on the roof of the factory when I heard Laurel whisper, 'This is so friggin cool.' At that moment it was hard to maintain the full animosity I had felt for the girl since the very first day I had met Oliver Queen.

Part 2

Things with Detective Lance had gone surprisingly smoothly after he got over the shock of finding Laurel and me standing on his front doorstep; me with the large, muscular Oliver tossed casually over my shoulder. But meeting Supergirl for the first time, even without the costume, often has that effect. Or perhaps it was watching me fly away to retrieve Digg and Ferris that did the trick.

I hadn't wanted to waste too much of our precious time explaining the situation to the detective. Fortunately, he had bowed to our promise to explain everything when we got back and our request to not divulge anything about Laurel's or my secrets if any of the others awoke in the meantime. I just hoped if that happened that Digg would keep his mouth shut about what he had seen until we were alone.

Therefore with a hurried goodbye and again clasping Laurel's hand, I set a rapid pace to Gotham. And when I want, I can fly like the wind. Okay, I can fly a lot faster than the wind. We covered the 1400 miles in just over 12 seconds. I didn't slow until we were hovering just slightly above the 850 foot tall central spire of the City Cathedral. The building dated to the early twentieth century and was done in the high gothic style. Sometimes I wondered if it was done in the gothic style because of the city's name or if the reverse was true and the city's name was due to the centerpiece church.

Laurel gestured slightly to our left. "Oracle's aerie is located in that clock tower."

I glided us over in that direction; glad it was the middle of the night which reduced the odds of anyone noticing us. Like the City Cathedral, this medieval-looking clock tower was tall, standing at least six hundred feet. In fact, all the buildings in central Gotham were tall; on average at least twice what they were in Starling City. And not a single modern-looking glass monolith was visible in the sprawling vista. No, the most contemporary style was a scattering of art deco designs that would have looked right at home in the 1930's, but the majority of the buildings looked like something from Europe in centuries past except redone on five times the original scale. And that was one of the things I loved about visiting Gotham, it felt unlike anywhere else in America. In the middle of the sunniest day of the year, the large central plaza still managed to feel dark and foreboding with more than a hint of underlying danger just like its most infamous resident, Batman.

However I didn't have time tonight for distracting thoughts about some of the adventures I had shared down through the years with the Dark Knight and turned my attention to the clock tower. I couldn't simply burn a route into the tower like I had burned our path out of the derelict factory back in Starling City. But I also didn't want to land all the way down at street level. Oh, sixty flights of stairs wouldn't take me more than a few seconds when I was in my Supergirl mode, but since I wasn't actually wearing my Supergirl garb and didn't want to be spotted by a casual observer, using the building's main front door was very low on my list.

I swept us around the tower and then spotted a small balcony just below the giant forty foot clock on the side away from Gotham's central plaza. While I swept in for a landing, my thoughts briefly returned to Batman. This was HIS town, so I wondered why he had never mentioned Oracle.

Once we were safely down, I was just about to reach out to try the door's handle when Laurel reached out first and tapped out what had to be a coded sequence.

"Do you enter the clock tower this way often?" I asked, just suppressing a grin at the thought of anyone scaling the exterior to reach this small balcony five hundred feet above street level.

Laurel shook her head. "No, I've never entered this way. Black Canary may be named after a bird, but I can't actually fly. I just assumed the same code that worked on the main entrance would also work here."

She must have been right, as when I glanced through the curtained door in front of us, I could see the silhouette of someone in a wheelchair approaching.

The door must have been remotely controlled, as it swung open while the wheelchair-bound woman was still ten feet away. Laurel immediately led the way in and started the introductions.

"Oracle, sorry for showing up unannounced, this is my friend Kara Zor-El. She has something urgent she wants to discuss."

Then turning to me, she continued. "Kara, this is Oracle."

At the moment, I don't know what was the bigger surprise: Laurel referring to me as a friend or the identity of the woman in the chair. When I had followed Laurel here a month earlier for one of her previous clandestine meetings, I had been so focused on Laurel that I hadn't given the woman in the chair a second glance. But now I couldn't do anything but stare. Whatever had happened to her, had to have happened in the six months since I had departed the JLA. Oh, it was almost eighteen months since I had last seen her, but certainly word of it would have reached me while I had still been with the JLA.

"Barbara, what happened to you?" For sitting there before me, with a broken spine that was easily visible to my x-ray vision, was my old friend, Batgirl.

End of Chapter 4

Author's Note: Wow, with the last chapter I passed over a thousand hits in a single day for the first time. Wow. It is fun to see one of my stories get such an enthusiastic response. Thanks, too, for the positive reviews, it definitely helps with my motivation!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Barbara didn't immediately answer my question, but instead lifted her right hand from the chair's controls and pressed it against her ear. She was wearing an earpiece with a wire-thin mic extending along the side of her still beautiful jawline. From the intent expression on her face, she was obviously struggling to hear whoever was at the other end of the connection. I had just started to crank up my super-hearing for a little eavesdropping when she spoke and it was definitely into the mic and not towards Laurel and me.

"I'm on my way," she said before her eyes flicked briefly towards me. "And I'm bringing reinforcements. Try not to get yourself killed. Oracle out."

With nothing more than the briefest nod in greeting, Barbara spun her chair and with an almost shouted, 'follow me,' she raced away at a speed faster than any wheelchair I had ever seen – certainly faster than any normal human could run.

Laurel and I shared a WTF look and had just started after her when the whole building shook like we were experiencing an earthquake. My first thought was of Merlyn's device that had gone off in Starling City three months earlier. Could another of those devices had been created before all the engineers, scientists, and technicians at Unidac had been slaughtered? But as the shockwave quickly damped down, it was apparent its source must have been something different.

As the floor stopped shaking, Laurel and I sprinted after Barbara. I considered once again sweeping Laurel up into my arms and shifting into super-speed, but this building wasn't that large and Barbara couldn't have gotten too far ahead.

We quickly passed out of the first room we had entered, which had been normally furnished like it was a space where Barbara could entertain guests who weren't aware of her secret identities, either Batgirl or now Oracle. And that brought to mind the whole question of why she was now going by Oracle rather than Batgirl. I assumed it must have to do with her injury.

Then when we entered the next room, I started to get the first inkling of an idea. Barbara as Batgirl had been all about the physical side – honing her body into the perfect fighting machine. She had never had much enthusiasm for the tech side. But now I found myself in a room filled with more tech gear than I had ever seen outside of Brainiac's Mothership. The walls were covered with floor to ceiling displays, even the floor and the ceiling were covered with embedded screens like one of the virtual reality rooms they were working on at M.I.T.

And the screens were all on and synced to the same image that was jerking around in a nauseating way like the image was coming from a 360-degree camera mounted to the head of someone who was in the middle of a high speed, almost out-of-control dance. I shifted into super-speed to slow the image enough to really make sense out of what was going on. Quickly, I realized the image had to be coming from a camera mounted on someone who was fighting at least a dozen black-garbed opponents. The person was good to be holding their own, but the person was still taking jarring hits that were causing the worst of the jerking motions of the camera. It reminded me of watching the fight Oliver had had barely two hours earlier when we had gone to get the server data with the location of Carol Ferris. Only this time it was like watching the fight from Oliver's point of view in the middle of things rather than my view from the periphery.

With an effort, I pulled my attention away from the all-encompassing images and focused my attention on the room. In the center was a compact control console designed to wrap around Barbara's chair. But the woman wasn't there. She was at the far side of the room and in the process of lifting herself out of the chair using an overhead chin up bar. Through the thin white tank top she was wearing, I could see the muscles of her shoulders and upper back flex as she moved. She proceeded to perform a series of gyrations that were every bit as impressive as watching Oliver do his patented Salmon Ladder pull-up thing, especially considering the lower half of her body was now useless deadweight.

She twisted and turned until she was in position to lower her legs into some high-tech looking leg braces. As soon as they were inserted, she hit a row of buttons along the upper edge of the mechanism that wrapped around her petite waist and crotch like a metallic bikini bottom. In response, a series of neon-blue lights appeared down the outer side of the bright chrome-finished leg braces. After pulling her fiery red hair back into a quick pony-tail, she grabbed a matching silvery headband from a nearby shelf and wrapped it around her forehead. Instantly, a small series of blue lights, that again matched the lights on the leg braces, sprang to life.

She had an expression of intense concentration on her face for a moment and then abruptly the leg braces began to move and she stepped away from the spot by the wall where the equipment had been located. Quickly, she strode across the room in a gait that wasn't quite normal, but obviously got the job done.

"This way," she shouted as she accelerated up into a run.

Laurel and I quickly followed and it was almost a relief to get out of the control room where the images covering the walls, ceilings, and floor continued to gyrate and spin as the camera wearer continued to fight against what looked like almost impossible odds.

As we left the control room behind, I increased my speed until I was running at Barbara's side. I had so many questions for the woman who I hadn't seen in eighteen months and who had obviously gone through some major life-altering events in the meantime that I didn't know where to even begin. In the end I decided to stick with what was most germane to the current situation.

"Barbara, who was that fighting on the screens?"

"Huntress, she is sort of my protégé these days and acts as my arms and legs out in the streets."

I glanced down at the leg braces that were letting her run faster than a normal human. "You seem to be getting around okay."

I watched as her eyes glanced down at the mechanical devices strapped to her damaged body. I'm sure I saw more than a hint of bitterness sweep across the gorgeous face of my old friend, but she quickly forced a small smile to replace it.

"Even though it was in no way his fault, I think Bruce still feels guilty over what happened to me. In response, he has overcompensated and given me carte blanche in his R&D lab and Lucius Fox's undivided attention for the last six months. These are just the prototype legs for a full powered-suit Lucius is developing for me. And as prototypes, they have their fair share of teething problems with frequent breakdowns and only enough power for a single hour of use. So, they mostly stay here in the Aerie for limited testing and I only take them into the field in an emergency like now."

"So what the hell is going on?" I asked.

"In a minute," she replied as she reached the wall of the third room we had passed through. She pressed a button and a section of the wall slid away. Laurel had just caught up, breathing hard, when a pair of the famous batpoles came into view. Barbara jumped out, wrapped her mechanically-enhanced legs around one and slid down out of view. I gestured Laurel to the other one and then I levitated into the air and followed the pair down.

I've seen the original batpoles that run from Wayne Manor down to the Batcave. They are long; the descent has to be at least four hundred feet. These weren't nearly as impressive only descending maybe eight stories down within the six hundred foot tall clock tower, but they were long enough that the obviously novice Laurel was going out of control. Quickly, I accelerated down and touched her arm and then used my gifts to slow her descent just in time to keep her from going 'splat' against the bottom on the only marginally padded floor.

Then taking time to glance around, even as Barbara raced ahead, I could see that billionaire Bruce Wayne had truly been lavish in outfitting Barbara's post-Batgirl existence. This whole level was a giant hangar facility filled with a plethora of flying machines from an assortment of unmanned surveillance drones to one of Batman's famous Batwings to the craft towards which Barbara was running – a much larger flying machine with a minivan-sized passenger compartment with seating for six. And like every other flying machine I could see, this one, too, sported a profile that looked like the Batman logo.

By the time Laurel and I caught up, Barbara had already disappeared through the craft's aft side entrance and I could see her at the controls behind the expansive cockpit windows. We were barely inside when the door slid closed behind us, the craft lifted from the floor on powerful thrusters, and the wall in the side of the building directly in front of us began to retract. Less than fifteen seconds after Laurel's feet hit the floor at the bottom of the batpole, the craft was clear of the building.

Barbara pushed the craft into a hard, four gee turn as she swept around the side of the building before straightening and accelerating. Laurel had just barely slid into the copilot's seat before the wild gyrations began and as soon as the craft leveled out, worked to get strapped in. I had been standing between the two front seats and had just kept my balance and had been only seconds from resorting to my gifts to keep to my feet when the ride smoothed out. I could see the bay glistening off to my right, so I knew we were headed north.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Old Gotham," replied Barbara. "Huntress was doing a little research up there for me when she was attacked."

I had been up to Old Gotham a time or two with Batman and it was a bleak, scary place where I wouldn't have wanted to go without all my gifts. Hell, there had been a time when even I hadn't wanted to go up there. I shuttered at the thought of going up there as a mere human.

"And what the hell was all the shaking while we were still upstairs? Is it related?"

Barbara shook her head. "I have no idea. Huntress was just looking into something that took place thirty years ago. It shouldn't have garnered any response let alone an attack by what looked like twenty men or a big-ass explosion."

We had just reached the heart of Old Gotham, which is located about six miles north of the center of New Gotham where the Clock Tower stood, and Barbara was just bringing the craft to a hover when some premonition of danger swept through me. I barely had time to touch the two other women and get my protective field stretched out to surround them when the massive energy beam hit.

Instantly, an eight foot diameter shaft of pure incandescent white energy penetrated straight through the cockpit of Barbara's oversized Batwing. Everything within that space was instantly vaporized and if I hadn't gotten my protective barrier up in time, Barbara and Laurel would have been vaporized, too. And as a result the entire craft quickly broke up around us.

By the time the afterimage of the impossible white flash had faded from my two companions' vision, Barbara just had time to exclaim, 'What the fuck?" before the remains of her craft crashed into a building far below in a massive fireball and the three of us were left hanging in midair a thousand feet above the ground.

I glanced around until I spotted a giant man-shaped figure flying through the air in our direction. It was still five miles away, but it didn't take telescopic vision to realize it was huge, at least three hundred feet tall.

Then I did crank up my telescopic vision in its direction and as it came into focus it was my turn to say 'What the fuck?'

I had seen something similar before only then it had been truly man-sized and not the size of this monstrosity. And the last time I had seen its like was twelve years ago when I had still been in Argo City. My class had taken a field trip to the Museum of Science and History. And while we were there, we had seen one of the old Kryptonian Warsuits developed in the distant, almost forgotten past of the First Age of Science. The suit had been massively armored with an internal nuclear-pile to power the particle beam weapons, the energy beam weapons, and the anti-gravity thrusters that allowed it to fly. The warsuits had been virtually indestructible.

And now I was facing a warsuit that had been scaled up by a factor of fifty. I could even see the emblem of one of the houses of Krypton emblazoned on its chest, although I didn't recognize it, so it was probably from some house that had fallen way back in antiquity.

Then I saw a white glow beginning to form in one of the barrels mounted on its shoulder. It was getting ready to fire again while I hovered in midair, constrained by the two women still in my grasp.

End of Chapter 5

Author's Note: So I was sitting here last night writing replies to reviews when I decided a simple conversation between Kara, Laurel, and Barbara suddenly sounded boring. This is a superhero story and things need to happen fast and furious (going to see that movie later today). And I was also reminded of one of my favorite movies, the original Terminator. In that movie the director, James Cameron, never let the story grind to a halt when some character needed to explain what was going on. No, if an explanation was needed he would do it while they were in the middle of a car chase or something. So I decided to try to do the same thing here – let's ramp up the action while Kara is trying to learn what is going on. Since today is my day off, I decided to dash out this first bit and post it before getting on to other things like going to see a movie. Have a great weekend. Duane.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter6

I accelerated straight down. I needed to drop Barbara and Laurel off quickly so I could face the giant warsuit and, hopefully, lead it away from the city. The amount of death and destruction it could cause if it seriously started firing its weapons here was frightening.

It was the middle of the night and we were moving fast, so I don't know how Barbara recognized any landmarks, but she had lived here her whole life unlike me, who only visited Gotham occasionally and Old Gotham even less. And with her various drones and aircraft from Wayne Industries, she had probably observed the city from above many times. Therefore when she pointed two blocks north and one block west from where we had started our descent, I headed in that direction.

As we neared the indicated spot, I saw what had to be Huntress. Eight guys were sprawled on the ground unmoving, but a dozen still circled the girl, who I could now see couldn't be a day over seventeen.

I dropped to the ground right beside her, released my grip on my two friends, jammed my shoulder bag containing the relatively fragile tablet into Barbara's hands, and released a quick blast of freezing breath towards the guys standing the furthest away. They all went tumbling across the wide, litter-strewn street. Hopefully, Huntress, Barbara, and Laurel could take care of the remaining guys.

I was still wondering at my suddenly thinking of Laurel as a friend as I climbed back into the air as fast as I could. Could a mere ten minutes of interaction with her have changed my thoughts and attitudes so completely? But then I knew I was the ultimate soft touch. I could never prevent myself from stopping and helping every kitten stuck up in a tree. And I was the same way with people. My natural tendency was to always give people the benefit of the doubt. Well, all people except Lena. I had tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but time and again she had spurned me, tried to hurt me, and left me humiliated and almost afraid to trust anyone. It was her actions, more than anything that had driven me away from the JLA and into an almost reclusive existence in Starling City, which I might still be experiencing if I hadn't met Oliver.

But I didn't have time for maudlin thoughts, the warsuit was approaching. However my recent thoughts of Lena's sudden reappearance in my life made me wonder if she was somehow connected to the warsuit. She definitely had a Kryptonian connection via Zod. But if she was controlling the warsuit, what had she been doing questioning Carol Ferris in the basement in Starling City less than ten minutes earlier? No, even she couldn't be in two places at once particularly since she should still be unconscious after experiencing Black Canary's ultrasonic blast.

I forced my musings about Lena down for the second time and tried to turn my full attention to my current opponent. The warsuit was now only three miles away and had just passed above the dock area from its path across the bay. As I climbed higher, I could finally see the lights of Metropolis across the wide water. Well, I could see where the lights of Metropolis should be, but more than half the distant skyline was dark. And it looked like both the giant LexCorp communication tower and the S.T.A.R. Labs large radio-telescope located on the western fringe of the city were completely missing. The Midvale School for Girls was less than five miles from those facilities and I couldn't help wondering if my old teachers and my friends among the staff were okay. Obviously, the giant weapon had rampaged through part of Metropolis before heading towards Gotham.

Racing forward, I cranked up my heat vision as the range closed. It would certainly be easiest if I could take it out from a distance. But even the highest intensity I could achieve didn't seem to be having any significant effect. The spot on the surface where the beam hit quickly glowed a vivid red against the dark purplish-blue metal, but the armor seemed to dissipate the heat as fast as I could introduce it. But then if this giant suit truly was like its ancient man-sized predecessor, its outer hull would be made of Kryptonium, the hardest, densest material known to Kryptonian science. It had long been used for blast and radiation shielding. The only good thing was that its only similarity to Kryptonite was in its name; it had none of the debilitating effects of that hated material from Krypton's core. A warsuit of this size made of Kryptonite, now there was a truly scary thought.

I shifted my heat vision to what I took to be its optical sensors or at least at the glowing red orbs in the head where eyes are typically located. I doubted my heat vision would be any more effective there than against the armor, but at least it might get the warsuit's attention and get it to follow me away from the city.

I thought it was beginning to work as the massive head had turned in my direction when I was distracted by a streak of green light approaching from the west. Flicking off my basically ineffective heat vision, I briefly turned my head away from the monstrous warsuit. Giving the green streak my full attention, it quickly resolved into a green and black clad man surrounded by a green halo and trailing a long green contrail. Quickly, the man swept in to hover beside me.

"I'm Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Can I be of assistance, ma'am?"

I simply stared at the man, who looked about my age, maybe a couple of years older. I had never heard of a superhero called Green Lantern. I had only been gone from the JLA for six months and then to find out first about Barbara's injury and now a new superhero. Nothing ever seems to standstill in the world of superheroes.

A little of the sarcastic, defensive Felicity persona must have resurfaced, as I heard myself blurt out, "Don't call me ma'am. Do I look like your mother?"

The man seemed to be slightly taken aback, as he quickly mumbled out, "Sorry, what should I call you?"

That was a surprisingly tough question. Should I tell him Supergirl, Kara, Linda, or Felicity? Well, Linda and Felicity were definitely out. They were my secret identities and I didn't want people to start associating them with Supergirl. Okay, so Felicity was 'out' to Laurel and Digg, but I didn't need to 'out' her to a man I had just met, even if he did apparently have superpowers and therefore secrets of his own.

And calling myself Supergirl, when I wasn't wearing the 'uniform', just seemed pretentious.

"I'm Kara," I ended up saying.

He nodded in my direction. "Kara it is. Now shall we take care of this beastie?"

He certainly came across as more than a little cocky. I wondered if he had ever come up against anything like a three hundred foot tall Kryptonian warsuit. But then I realized I hadn't either.

Damn, stick me in close proximity of a hot guy, and this Hal Jordan definitely qualified as a hot guy, and my brain turns to mush. I may not have started to stutter and weak knees weren't a problem when my feet aren't even touching the ground, but those would have been better things than what actually happened. I had been so focused on this guy; I had momentarily forgotten to keep an eye on the warsuit. And for a giant construct, the suit was very fast. It came barreling in out of nowhere and slammed a twenty foot tall fist into us.

The hit was so hard I know my body broke the sound barrier. It took only a fraction of a second, but I was five miles away and almost at the outskirts of Gotham when I slammed into the ground. My body blasted a fifteen foot deep crater before I slammed to a stop.

Slowly I pulled myself up into a sitting position and shook my head to clear my jumbled thoughts. I couldn't remember the last time I had been hit so hard, maybe not since we had battled Darkseid. And that time it had taken the whole League to take him down. And where was the League now anyway? The giant warsuit had been rampaging for at least five minutes and somebody should have shown up by now. Well, somebody besides a superhero I had never heard of. Then I remembered the near earthquake we had felt upon arriving at Barbara's clock tower. Had that been the warsuit slamming another superhero into the ground? I'm sure my impact must have felt like an earthquake to anyone in the general area.

With more effort than it should have taken, I forced myself back to my feet and then up into the air. I had no idea what was taking the rest of the League so long, but I had to keep the monster distracted until more help showed up.

As I raced back up to where the warsuit continued to hover two thousand feet above the city, my eyes scanned the ground below me. Had this Green Lantern survived the titanic blow? Or had he been in over his head? Damn, I should have been paying more attention to my opponent.

I slammed into the middle of the warsuit's torso, fists first, with every ounce of speed and momentum I could generate in crossing the two thousand foot gap from where I had impacted the ground. The shock which raced up my arms was unbelievable. And for all the pain I felt, all I had succeeded in doing was knock the massive warsuit up about another thousand feet into the air. But it quickly brought itself to a halt and blithely hung there seeming to glare down at me.

I had hit it hard enough to shatter mountain ranges. The hit would have knocked any ordinary object of that size out of the atmosphere. Staring at this impossible foe trying to figure out my next move, I suddenly realized the man in green and black was suddenly hovering beside me again.

"Here, let me try," he said.

I watched as he raised his right hand and pointed the heavy looking green ring on his middle finger in the direction of the warsuit. A wave of green light and energy streamed forth and quickly coalesced into a giant two hundred foot mallet about five hundred feet above the warsuit. The mallet then swung down and drove the warsuit towards the ground. The blow knocked the monstrous machine down almost twenty-five hundred feet before it regained control seemingly bare feet above Gotham's tallest spires.

"Are you an idiot?" I screamed at the man hovering beside me. "We need to drive it away from the city not down onto it. If it had impacted, it might have killed thousands of people."

It was like he didn't even realize the consequences of his actions until I brought it to his attention. Then through the surrounding darkness, I saw his cheeks begin to glow in my infrared vision. The man was blushing.

"Sorry, this is my first time doing something like this. I wasn't thinking things through," he stated sheepishly before turning his gaze away from me and back towards the warsuit climbing back towards our altitude.

Great, I thought. The League is nowhere in sight and I was saddled with a virgin. Then I remembered the scary phone conversation between Oliver and my crazy A.I. mother after which I had promised myself to never utter or even think about the V-word again or at least until that whole situation was safely behind me. Whenever that might be.

"Fine," I replied a little more harshly then I had intended with my thoughts still roiled with the V-word. "Then just try to keep that in mind. We are here to protect people. Now, let's get to work."

The Green Lantern nodded. "Okay. How about I pull and you push?"

The green wavy mist again raced out of his ring. This time, it quickly formed into a giant lasso like some five hundred foot tall cowboy would use to rope a steer at a rodeo. It swirled around the Green Lantern's head a few times and then raced out to lasso the giant warsuit just below the armpits. Quickly it tightened and the Green Lantern began to pull. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to drag the giant machine forward.

"Ah, a little help here, please," he said in a strained tone as though he was using the strength of his mere body to move the fifty thousand tone warsuit. And then he was straining even more as one of the warsuit's energy projectors locked on him and he was forced to simultaneously maintain a protective force field bubble while continuing to pull.

"Right, sorry," I stated, as I kicked my ass into gear. But before I had even begun to move, another of the warsuit's weapons locked on to me. It wasn't totally disabling, but the intense power beam was annoying and cumulatively painful. I needed to get to the other end of the warsuit to do my part in pushing, but I had to be careful the energy beam didn't strike the city below while trying to pursue me. Therefore I was forced to take a looping, twisting course over the top of the warsuit. This briefly brought me within range of six of its weapons simultaneously and for a moment I thought I wasn't going to make it. But somehow I made it down passed its legs and then looped around to slam myself against the bottom of its feet.

Fortunately, the suit's original designers had never intended for it to combat an opponent that would have been barely more than an inch tall if the warsuit had been its normal human-sized. Therefore it didn't have any weapons that hit me when I was directly behind its feet.

I had to pause for a couple of seconds to catch my breath. Then remembering the Green Lantern was still fully exposed to the warsuit's weapons even as he continued to pull the massive machine away from the city, I forced myself to start pushing the machine as hard as I could. Quickly, I was straining just as hard as the Green Lantern was.

I could feel when the warsuit's anti-gravity pulsers kicked into high gear. With my x-ray vision I could see it had even shut down the weapons that had continued to splay on the Green Lantern to focus all of its resources on its drive units. The machine roared and shook, but the two of us continued to push it away from the city. It took what felt like five minutes of continuous maximum effort before I finally saw the last lights of the suburbs disappear behind me.

But then I wondered what to do next. It had taken our best combined efforts just to get it clear of the city, but that had done nothing to defeat it. It was still fully operational and if we stopped it could instantly turn back and attack the city, if that had been its goal.

Fortunately, just then I became aware of a loud, booming voice. It may have been shouting for seconds before I heard it over the strain I was feeling from exerting so much energy against the warsuit.

"GET CLEAR. I'LL HANDLE IT NOW."

Once it registered, I quickly recognized Superman's voice. And I don't remember the last time I had been so grateful to hear it. Although at the moment I had no idea what he was going to do. I mean, Superman is a little bigger and stronger than me, but it had taken all of my efforts and those of the Green Lantern just to move it clear of the city. But hopefully Superman had some kind of a plan.

With relief, I stopped my exertion and then raced away as fast as I could. For all I knew, perhaps Superman was going to detonate some kind of bomb to destroy it. Although from what I remembered from the long ago visit to the museum in Argo City, the warsuits were designed to survive an atomic blast.

I spotted Superman just in time to see he was carrying some type of projector device in his hands and had a large box strapped to his back. The projector began to put out energy waves that would have been invisible to a normal human and I could only see them by shifting my vision well beyond the x-ray range.

But the effects of the weapon's rays were immediately apparent to even the most casual observer. The giant warsuit began to shrink. And shrink. And shrink. It quickly reached human-size, but continued to shrink. It had almost shrunk to nothingness before Superman switched off the projector and then raced forward with a small, clear bottle and a matching stopper. He must have scooped it up, as he abruptly jammed the stopper into place before turning and flying back over to me.

By the time Superman reached me and dropped into a hover, the Green Lantern had also joined us.

"What the hell was all that?" I asked, as I took a moment to glance down and take in my appearance. After the initial impact with the warsuit's fist, my protective shields must have been temporarily knocked out of commission. And my street clothes were never designed to handle the kind of abuse my Supergirl suit could take. I was covered in dirt and mud. Both knees of my pants and the elbows of my jacket and blouse were ripped open. Then I suddenly realized I was feeling a draft across my butt. I must have torn out the seat of my jeans, too. And that's when I remembered I had gone commando for what I had thought was going to be just an evening of working in the lair below the bar with Oliver. I could feel a blush blooming across my face. I quickly rotated slightly so my ass wasn't pointed towards either man. Hopefully, the Green Lantern didn't have anything like enhanced night vision.

"Sorry, several . . . ah . . . several undesirable types managed to escape from Kandor and thought enlarging one of the old warsuits to super-size and then putting it on autopilot and aiming it towards Metropolis would be a useful distraction. I had to fly all the way back up to the Fortress to retrieve Brainiac's shrink device."

As with so many other times this evening, I had no idea what Superman was talking about. Kandor? The name, of course, was familiar although I hadn't heard it since my school days back in Argo City. Kandor had been the capital of Krypton until Brainiac destroyed it about 80 years before the planet had blown apart.

"Kandor?" I asked.

"Oh, that's right, you've been out of things for a while. It turns out Brainiac didn't destroy the city, he used a shrink ray to reduce the city and the surrounding sixty miles of countryside to the point where it would fit in a five foot diameter bottle. I discovered he was in possession of Kandor about four months ago and managed to get it from him. It has been up at the Fortress ever since while I try to figure out what to do with it. I mean, it is filled with 300,000 Kryptonians who are like a similar cross-section of people here on Earth with personalities ranging from good to almost evil. I can't restore them to full-size and loose 300,000 Supermen on the planet, I'm afraid humanity wouldn't survive and this is their planet."

I tried to take it all in, but it was going to take some time to digest. So I focused on the immediate situation.

"So these criminal types that escaped from Kandor and loosed the warsuit, what about them? Do we have to deal with them next?"

Superman shook his head. "Wonder Woman and the Manhunter dealt with them while I was dealing with the warsuit. That's why there wasn't anyone here to help."

Then he turned to the Green Lantern and extended his hand. "And thanks for your help. I appreciate it."

The two men shook hands, but it was obvious from Superman's expression that he had never met the other man. So I made the introductions.

"Superman, this is the Green Lantern. Green Lantern, this is Superman."

"It is an honor to meet you, sir," said the Green Lantern. "And, my name is Hal Jordan."

Superman nodded. "And I'm Clark, but you might want to be careful about giving out your real name. If anyone outside the JLA learns about it, it can come back to haunt you as someone may try to get to you through your family and friends."

"Have you had the ring long?" continued Superman nodding in the direction of the heavy green ring. "I think if you had been using it, it would have come to our attention."

"You know about the ring?" asked Hal.

Superman nodded. "I've dealt with the Green Lanterns before, although you are the first human Green Lantern I have met."

Hal nodded in turn and then replied to Superman's earlier question. "Yeah, I just got the ring. Well, it was about a week ago that I came across this dying alien who gave me the ring. Before that I was a test pilot for Ferris Air. And after I got the ring, it took me to Oa, the home planet of the Guardians, for training. I only arrived back on Earth about twenty minutes before the Ring told me there were problems out east that could use my attention. And, boy, I never expected to go up against something like that in the first hour I was back."

"Welcome to the world of being a superhero," said Superman with a small chuckle. "I think you should come with me and visit JLA headquarters up on our satellite. The Martian Manhunter will want to make his pitch for you to join forces with us. Nobody is going to hold a gun to your head to join, but you should at least know what other resources are available when you run into a situation like tonight where it is more than one of us can handle."

"Thanks, I think I would like that," said Hal with a grin.

I could see the glint in his eye that said he was still in the 'awe' stage of discovering he was now one of the world's superheroes. From experience, I knew the 'awe' would wear off soon enough.

"Ah, before you two go harrying off, Hal, you said you worked for Ferris Air?" When he nodded, I continued. "Do you know Carol Ferris?"

His eyes seemed to light up at the woman's name and he quickly nodded again.

"She was kidnapped today in Starling City," I stated. He looked like he was about to go racing off to look for her this very second, so I quickly made a 'hold your horses' gesture with my hands. "She's okay, I and some friends managed to rescue her. But you may want to come with me before getting sidetracked with the JLA stuff, so we can figure out what is going on."

Then I turned in Superman's direction. "Lena was behind the kidnapping. I saw her briefly, but, as always, she managed to get away. Do you think a connection exists between the kidnapping and tonight's incident with the warsuit?"

Superman displayed a contemplative expression for a moment and then shrugged. "I don't know. Kandor has been on Earth for months, it's possible she has heard about it and has managed to contact some of its occupants. We both know she has a fixation on all things Kryptonian. I'll do some digging from my end and get back to you, probably in a few days. Would a short visit from Clark be acceptable?"

I knew he hadn't been happy when I had departed from the JLA. With all their resources, I'm sure he had known where I had been the whole time, but he had been courteous enough to keep his distance. But I could already feel the hooks trying to pull me back in. And at least until the situation with Lena was resolved I might have to hook back up with them. After that, well, we would have to see.

"Fine. I'll expect you in a few days."

He gave a small nod. Then with the projector device in one hand and the big box strapped to his back, he still managed to remove his great dark red cape with a flourish. "Here, I think you may need this more at the moment then I do."

I took it with a grateful nod and wrapped it around my waist to cover my totally exposed ass.

End of Chapter 6

Author's Note: Well, it's been a long time since we have seen Oliver and had any Olicity action, so I think the next chapter will jump things back to Starling City. But I needed these last few chapters to set some things in motion to carry the story forward. Plus, I felt the need to throw in a big action sequence :)


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Laurel, Hal, and I stood just outside the front door of Detective Lance's house. Hal's Green Lantern suit was retracted back into the ring leaving him in a pair of jeans and a tight, form-fitting white tee-shirt. Laurel had removed her small half-mask, but was still dressed in her Black Canary costume. However it could almost pass for a little cocktail dress, as bizarre as that sounded. I had forced us to take a slight detour back to my apartment so I could ditch my shredded clothing and Superman's cape. I was now dressed in a pair of black leggings, a light colored blouse, and my black leather jacket. It wasn't a perfect match to what I had been wearing the last time Oliver had seen me, but hopefully it was close enough.

Exactly thirty-seven minutes had passed since Laurel had loosed her ultrasonic screech back in the derelict factory's basement. That should give us at least five minutes to get our story straight with Laurel's father before Oliver and Digg should wake and twenty minutes before Carol Ferris would come around.

After Superman had headed off to his Fortress or to the JLA's orbital satellite or wherever, the Green Lantern and I headed back to Old Gotham to see if Oracle, Huntress, and Laurel were okay. As we flew, I explained about the situation with the other women and then asked whether he was ready to 'out' his superhero secret to them or if he would prefer to hold it in reserve. I guess Superman's warning about the risks of people knowing his secret must have sunk in, as he decided it might be best to keep quiet about it for now. Therefore, once I asserted the girls were okay, we landed around the corner and walked the last half block with his suit hidden away.

A few of the opposition must have broken and run, as I only counted fifteen bodies strewn around when we walked up. The girls were standing there chatting, but the conversation stopped as we approached. Barbara's face broke into a grin that I thought was going to turn into a full-blown laugh when she saw the large red cape wrapped around my waist.

After introductions were made and I had given a brief explanation about what had happened with the giant old warsuit, leaving out Hal's part, I offered to give everyone a lift back to Oracle's Clock Tower, but Barbara and Huntress declined. They wanted to pursue why Huntress had been attacked and by whom. Plus Huntress had a bike nearby and they could use it to get back home.

Therefore after a quick conversation with Barbara about whether she had known Lena had been involved with the situation back in Starling City, which was the whole reason Laurel and I had made the jaunt to Gotham, Laurel, Hal, and I headed for Starling City. Barbara hadn't had any idea Lena had been involved, but promised, like Superman, to keep her eyes and ears open for any information on the topic. For Lena had caused problems for Barbara and Bruce before, too.

So to keep Hal's secret from Laurel, and hopefully the others back in Starling City, I had used my gifts to give him a lift in the same way I had given a lift to Laurel earlier.

Now, as Laurel stepped forward to open the door into her father's house, I tried to get the whole litany of overlapping and almost confusing secrets straight in my head. Laurel's secret was only 'out' to me and her father. Hal's secret was only 'out' to me. But my secret was 'out' to varying degrees to everyone except Oliver. Well, everyone who mattered like Digg, Laurel, Hal, and Detective Lance. The only one besides Oliver who didn't know about me was Carol Ferris and only because she was unconscious before she ever saw me. The situation really sucked. Nobody is perfect about keeping secrets. Eventually, a careless word or comment or even a glance might give Oliver a hint that something more was going on with me than I had admitted.

Briefly, I toyed with the idea of blurting out the truth since so many other people already knew. But I had no idea how he would react. He might be okay with it, but maybe not. Perhaps he would consider me a monster with all my superhuman gifts. And maybe he would hate me for hiding my abilities for the entire six months I had known him. The number of occasions where my gifts could have made his life and his battle against the corrupt leaders of the city easier was almost too many to count. Hell, I could have rounded up everyone on his father's list in a single evening. Not that I could have done to them what Oliver had done to so many. I may have, at least temporarily, parted ways with the JLA, but that didn't mean I was ready to start using my gifts to hurt or kill humans.

No, I wasn't yet ready to risk all the potential ways things could go wrong, if I 'outed' my gift to Oliver. It might be different if we were in a strong relationship. But if I was perfectly honest with myself, I wasn't sure if Oliver thought of me as much more than a simple, convenient underling, some tiny cog in the giant Queen Industries machine that had gotten sucked into the whole vigilante business almost against its will.

Laurel pushed the door open and her father's living room was much as we had left it earlier. Oliver and Digg were half sitting, half sprawled at opposite ends of the sofa. Carol Ferris was similarly stretched out in what had to be Detective Lance's personal favorite seat, a comfortable old La-Z-Boy with the best view of a modest TV.

Oliver and Digg were starting to move around restlessly, indicating Laurel's ultrasonic screech was about to wear off and there wouldn't be time to clue Laurel's father into the plan to protect our secrets we had come up with during the trip back from Gotham. Therefore I pulled my glasses out of the pocket of my jacket and slipped them into place. Then I moved over and settled on the couch between Oliver and Digg. It wasn't part of the plan, but I found myself leaning over and resting my cheek on Oliver's shoulder. Laurel was looking at me and then frowned. I think that was the first time she saw me as potential competition for Oliver's attention.

But before she had time to say or do anything, Oliver jolted upright with a gasp that caught me so off guard, I slid over sideways and ended up with my head between his back and the couch. I forced my eyes shut and then yawning, acting as though I was just waking, I straightened up.

"What . . . what . . . where are we?" I mumbled around another yawn.

"Ah, I see the sleeping beauties are beginning to wake," stated Detective Lance from the doorway leading into the kitchen. He was carrying a tray filled with steaming cups. "I thought some coffee might help."

Digg abruptly sat up and rubbed at his eyes. Then his hand darted to his waist where he habitually kept a gun. We had felt it best to disarm everyone so no stupid accidents happened before everyone's brain was running at one hundred percent.

Digg's eyes then darted around the room, taking in all the occupants. They rested longer on me than anyone else as though he was trying to decide if what he had seen earlier was real or a dream. Finally, they ended on Lance. "Coffee sounds good, sir."

Everyone except the still slumbering Carol Ferris took a cup. Lance set the empty tray on the dining room table located at the end of the small combination living room-dining room. Then he pulled chairs out for Hal and Laurel before leaning against the edge of the table.

"How did we get here?" asked Oliver taking a sip of his coffee and seeming to notice with relief that his hood had been removed somewhere along the way.

"The woman who was holding Carol Ferris hostage set off some kind of weapon that left you all unconscious. You three were lying on the floor and Carol was tied to a chair when we arrived. We thought it was better to get you out of there before any cops showed up," stated Laurel.

"Laurel, what were you doing there? I saw you enter the building on surveillance footage a good fifteen minutes before we arrived," asked Oliver.

Laurel gestured towards Hal. "Do you know Hal Jordan? He works for Carol. He got in touch with me at work this afternoon to get my help. Remember the Olsen-Smyth financial scam case I worked out in Coast City four months ago? I met Hal while I was out there. So when he needed help here in Starling City, he called me."

"And the two of you went out to the Glades alone? That was extremely reckless," replied Oliver.

Laurel stared at Oliver for a few seconds and then her lips quirked into a grin. "So, ah, who ended up lying unconscious down there and who had to drag somebody's sorry ass out of there?" she retorted.

"Hal, do you know why Carol was kidnapped?" asked Digg in a serious tone, obviously trying to get the conversation back on track.

Hal rose from his chair and walked across to where Digg still sat on the sofa. When he extended his hand, the tall African-American climbed to his feet and offered his own. They both stood well over six feet, however Digg was about three inches taller and carried at least forty pounds more muscle.

"Hal Jordan, ah, Mister . . ." began Hal.

"John Diggle, but my friends call me Digg."

"Digg," echoed Hal with a curt nod of his head. Then releasing the other man's hand, he continued. "No, I have no idea why Carol was kidnapped. I haven't talked to her in almost ten days as I have been out of the country on an assignment. I just got back this afternoon and found out about her disappearance. There have been other attempts on members of the Ferris family over the last few years, so they all have a lo-jack chip implanted in their butts. So when I discovered her trail led to Starling City, I contacted Laurel."

Hal paused to glance to where Carol still slept on the la-z-boy. "Hopefully, Carol will be able to tell us when she wakes up."

Digg nodded and then turned in my direction. I flashed what I hoped was a 'be very careful what you are about to say' look at him.

For a second it looked like he was planning to say something different, but in the end he simply asked. "Felicity, you appeared to know the woman? You said her name was Lena . . . Lena Thor-something."

"Lena Thorul. We were roommates in school."

"You went to college with her?" asked Oliver, really turning in my direction for the first time since waking.

I toyed with replying 'yes', as it suddenly felt easier than the truth. But the truth would be too easy for him to find even with his minimal tech skills.

"Ah, no, we went to high school together at the Midvale School for Girls in Metropolis. It was a private school for . . . for . . . for orphans, okay?"

"But I talked to your Mom on the phone less than an hour ago," Oliver replied sounding more than a little confused.

"I was put up for adoption as an infant," I replied. It wasn't strictly true, as I had had loving parents until they had shipped me to Earth alone at the age of fourteen. But I certainly had felt utterly abandoned often enough during those first years. "But I never got adopted and stayed in the orphanage until I was sent to Midvale.

"It wasn't until two years ago, after I was out of college that I tried to track down my birth parents. I found my Mom, but we are still struggling to find a relationship that really works for us."

By the end I could feel tears burning in my eyes. That story wasn't quite the truth, but it contained enough of the truth to cause much the same reaction. I had a place in the JLA, but it wasn't the same as having my real family. And I had Clark, my cousin, but sometimes he was so focused on being the best possible Superman, he seemed to forget I occasionally needed a shoulder to lean on or cry on.

"There, there, it will be okay," stated Oliver while pulling me into a hug and rubbing his large powerful hand across my back. It felt so wonderful.

He hugged me and rocked me for several minutes before finally pulling back.

"Felicity, what can you tell us about this Lena Thorul? Why would she have wanted to kidnap Carol?"

I pulled off my glasses and dabbed at my eyes while I tried to think. How much of the truth should I tell? Could I tell the whole truth about Lena without giving away my own secrets? If I told them anything less, it might come back to bite us all in the ass when Lena did whatever she was going to do next and the others weren't ready.

"It turns out Lena wasn't an orphan either," I began. "Her great-aunt placed her there under a false name in an attempt to give her a normal life. But sometimes I think she needn't have bothered. Lena has never been normal and was never destined for a normal life."

I paused for a moment to figure out how to say what had to be said next. And, no, I didn't just pause for dramatic effect.

"Lena's real name is Lena Luthor. Her father is Lex Luthor."

"Lex . . . Lex Luthor?" stammered Oliver.

I nodded. "Yes, the insane Lex Luthor who tried to nuke the West Coast." This had happened several years before I reached Earth, but even I had heard about it. "The same Lex Luthor who aided General Zod in his attempt to defeat Superman."

"And you went to High School with his daughter?" asked Digg. And from the look in his eyes, some light bulb appeared to have gone off. Obviously after bringing up Superman it hadn't taken any great intuitive leap to realized if I could throw around giant machines, I had to be Superman's famous little cousin.

"Yes, although I didn't learn who she was until we had almost graduated. And that is also when I learned about her hatred of Superman. Her mother was killed almost two years before the events out in California, when Lena was ten. And Lena and Lex both blame Superman for not being able to save her. And I think it was her mother's death that pushed her father into his murderous rampage. When Superman finally stopped him, Lex ended up in a prison psychiatric ward. And Lena blames Superman for that, too.

"So for the last six years, Lena has been doing everything she can to come up with some way to defeat Superman and get the revenge she feels she deserves. And make no mistake; if anyone can figure out a way, it's her. She is by far the most intelligent person I have ever known. Whatever she wants from Carol Ferris, I would put the odds at ninety-eight percent it has something to do with defeating Superman."

Once I started speaking, the words just seemed to roll out. Perhaps it was all the pent up feelings I had towards the other girl, the girl who had been my best friend, sometimes it seemed like my only friend, during the first hard lonely years after I arrived on Earth.

But saying them out loud drove home their significance. Whatever Lena wanted from Carol, it was most likely related to furthering her vendetta against Superman and me. What had Carol been working on that might be a threat to Superman?

I forced my gaze outwards and took in the expressions on everyone's faces. Most of them knew who I truly was, or at least strongly suspected in Digg's case. And I could easily see how they could have substituted 'Supergirl' for 'Superman' in my previous comments.

Then I looked at Oliver's face. A mixture of emotions were clearly visible. I saw at least a hint of prudent fear. It was one thing to wear a hood and hunt the evil humans who were preying on his city. It was quite another to get involved with metahumans like Superman or some of his counterparts on the dark side. An arrow, even one with an explosive tip, wasn't going to do much good against people who were effectively invulnerable. Of course, my big concern was whether that entirely appropriate prudent fear would extend to me, if he ever discovered I was Supergirl.

But I could also see a hint of compassion towards me in his eyes. Oh, not towards the 'me' who was Supergirl, I don't think he had guessed my secret yet. No, it was compassion towards the 'me' who was Felicity, the unlucky girl who had had a world-class megalomaniac for a roommate in high school.

I thought he was about to say something, perhaps something soothing. And perhaps he might even put his arms around me again. But before he did either, Carol Ferris began to moan as though she was coming around. Surely it hadn't been an extra fifteen minutes already, I wondered. But then I knew time seemed to flow differently whenever Oliver focused his attention on me.

Hal was the first one to move, and he was at her side so fast, I thought he had used his superpowers. He had her head cradled in an instant and was slowly helping her up into a sitting position.

"Carol, are you okay? It's me, Hal. Can you hear me?" he repeated over and over.

He slowly rocked her as Detective Lance headed back out into the kitchen, I suspected for more coffee. He must have an industrial-sized coffee-maker out there. But then I remembered every cop show I had ever seen. The only thing they seemed to like more than donuts was coffee!

Carol was sitting up on her own and the recliner's foot rest had been retracted by the time the police detective returned. Color had returned to her cheeks and she accepted the offered cup of coffee gratefully.

"Hal," she began once she finally was able to speak. "Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for over a week. And how did you end up here?"

"It's sort of a long story and this isn't the right time or place to go into it," he replied. Then when he saw her eyes flick to all the other people present, he began the introductions. "Carol, this is Laurel Lance, her father Detective Lance, John Diggle, and Felicity Smoke. And I'm sure you must remember Oliver Queen, or at least I remember you telling me enough stories about your adventures at Billard-St Judes in New York."

I was ready to jump in and say it was Smoak not Smoke, but then decided to hold my tongue. It really wasn't that important in the overall scheme of things. And the way Hal had said it – Felicity Smoke – had had a surprisingly nice ring to it. Why hadn't I thought of Felicity Smoke when I had been looking for a new name?

But then my thoughts were drawn back to the ongoing conversation.

"Oliver is that really you? I was devastated when I heard you had been lost in a boating accident in the Pacific all those years ago. You were the first one of our old clique to bite the big one. We even all got back together at the Russian Tea Room for a little improvised wake."

"Really? The whole gang was there?" asked Oliver looking more animated than I had seen him since he had woken up. Of course, he probably had lots of wonderful memories of his old high school days unlike me and my situation with Lena.

"Yes. I was so happy when I heard you were found alive. I meant to call, but you know how it is. Those prep school days are now all far in our past."

Oliver nodded and I could see more than a hint of regret in his expression. I wondered how often his memories of Carol and their times together in school had helped him keep his sanity when he had been stranded on that remote island for all those years.

But then Oliver gave a small shake of his head and I could see he was forcing his thoughts away from long ago days and back to the present. "Carol, what did Lena Luthor want from you?"

Carol looked momentarily taken aback by this abrupt change in the topic. I saw her eyes flash to the room's other occupants as though she was wondering if one of the many people she didn't recognize might be working for Lena. But then her eyes settled on Hal and she seemed to calm a little. Or at least at first, then it was like Oliver's question sank in and she remembered her encounter with Lena for the first time.

"Oh, my God. The ship. I told her about the prototype ship!"

End of Chapter 7

Author's Note: Wow, it is hard to believe the story has already reached seven chapters and sixty-five pages and it has only covered about four hours. But then I have always liked tight little stories the best.

So, did anyone catch the little Easter Egg about Oliver and Carol's past?


End file.
